A happy balance, then? Not really, and this is the tension of the park experience. In the lobby, displays present maps of geyser activity, but also show warnings: “Danger! Hot Water Can Kill.” Bears, we learn, attack; bison gore. One book sold here is “Death in Yellowstone: Accidents and Foolhardiness in the First National Park” by Lee H. Whittlesey. There is the 1981 incident of the man who leapt into a 202-degree hot spring to rescue his dog, both perishing, and the 1970 tragedy of the 9-year-old boy who fatally jumped or slipped into another pool. In Yellowstone, whose geothermal areas are generally seen by driving from one hot spot to another, it can be easy to forget this is not a theme park.

The center, though, reminds us that this is nature tamed, not nature made harmless. And for all its fierceness, we learn, nature is also fragile. Soldiers housed in the park a century ago used Old Faithful to do their laundry with no lasting ill effects, but other geysers have been stifled by human carelessness. Springs and pools are viewed by walking on boardwalks, protecting nature and humans from each other.

So nature here is carefully packaged. And the center’s exhibition shows why, examining the fearsome geological forces that have shaped this section of the park. Designed by Christopher Chadbourne & Associates of Boston and shaped by Linda Young, Yellowstone’s chief of interpretation, and other park educators, the exhibition could have been stronger had it been more ambitious. But as is, it clearly explains the phenomena. It shows in patient (and sometimes repetitive) displays that Yellowstone is not only on a 40-some-mile-wide caldera — the crater from a volcanic eruption about 640,000 years ago — it actually also lies on the surface of a live volcano, its land mass undulating on a chain of magma.

That molten rock’s interactions with waters seeping downward create a topography with more hydrothermal phenomena than any other site in the world. Pressurized waters are heated well over the boiling point and then periodically burst through constricted channels. Gases of subsurface boilings escape through rocks like steam from radiator valves; mild eruptions and earthquakes are regularly felt. Yellowstone is a laboratory of geological change, which is how, some displays here show, it is also being studied.

Touch screens can lead you through some of the more dramatic Yellowstone features, like Morning Glory Pool, whose spectacular flowerings were thwarted by generations of visitors tossing in coins and clothing, and the Mud Volcano, which erupts rarely but fills the air with the stench of hydrogen sulfide gas.