Science Storms — Chicago Scenic helps MSI reveal the power and science of nature

This spring, the Museum of Science and Industry, Chicago (MSI) opened Science Storms, its much-anticipated 26,000-square-foot permanent exhibit located in the Museum’s Allstate Court. The $38-million exhibit reveals the extraordinary science behind some of nature’s most powerful and compelling phenomena—tornados, lightning, fire, tsunamis, sunlight, avalanches and atoms in motion.

MSI staff and lead design partner Evidence Design have been developing and working on the project for almost five years; Chicago Scenic has been an integral part of the project for nearly two-and-a-half years, working first on the Sunlight exhibit and then helping to install the many additional exhibit elements.

CSSI’s Senior Project Manager Ross Hamilton and Project Manager Jean Burch worked on the Sunlight exhibit, which invites Museum guests to wonder at the physical properties and behaviors of light: how it bends, bounces, transmits and interferes. A recreation of Newton’s famous prism experiment, in which Newton discovered that white light is composed of a multitude of colors, allows guests to create their own rainbow using giant prisms and mirrors. Guests are also able to examine sunlight as an energy source through hands-on experiments that allow them to convert sunlight to electricity to race cars, or convert sunlight to heat warm pools of water and observe the progress with a thermal camera.

For all the sunlight experiments, a heliostat mirror system - located on the Museum’s roof 75 feet overhead – collects natural light when it’s available. When it’s not available, an alternative artificial light source is used.

Newton’s Prism Experiment
“We started work on Science Storms in fall 2007 by building a prototype of the experiment,” Burch recalls. “That December, we took over our Soft Goods Department for about a week to set up prisms, mirrors and fabrics so we could pinpoint the correct angle of the sun to project a rainbow.”

The next year was challenging as Chicago Scenic staff began to manufacture the elements of the exhibit in a scale that Science Storms requires. Overall, the Sunlight exhibit is 65 feet tall (the approximate height of a 6 ½ story building) and each of the four prisms in the experiment weighs 250 pounds. (Combined, that’s about a half a ton of prisms.)

Converting Sunlight to Heat
Remember the kid in the neighborhood who used a magnifying glass to set ants on fire? This second component illustrates that principle in a kinder way - an 18-inch Fresnel lens acts as a magnifying glass and converts sunlight into heat that boils water. A thermal camera enables guests to see the water temperature change.

“Working with a lens that size was a challenge,” Burch said. “Focused, it can catch wood on fire in about two seconds. We melted steel and cracked marble with it.” The team experimented widely with materials and eventually settled on a piece of marble set in a tray custom made of glass and stainless steel, placed in a shallow pool.

Converting Sunlight to Electricity
The third component of the exhibit demonstrates how sunlight can be converted into electricity. Solar panels collect solar energy and transfer power to two slot cars that then speed around a racetrack. Guests can adjust how much sunlight falls on the solar panels, thus speeding up or slowing down the cars.

Sounds simple, but achieving the correct balance of energy wasn’t, Burch said. “We needed to create enough energy to overcome inertia and get the cars moving. Once moving, however, the cars would speed up and jump the track.” A clamping circuit now caps off voltage levels so the cars run at a consistent top speed—and stay on the track—much to the delight of Museum guests.

CSSI’s automation and control systems were crucial to making exhibits interactive. Since each Sunlight exhibit component offers guests different points of interactivity, automation and precision control played a big part in the exhibit development. Project Engineer Rob Kovarik and Electrical Department Head Curt Kucik developed the 13 points of motion that allow guests to interact with the exhibits.

Using controllers fashioned to resemble the overhead prisms and mirrors, Museum guests can rotate them until they capture the right angle of sunlight and produce a rainbow. They can open or close solar panel doors to power up or stop the race cars. And they can move the Fresnel lens up or down to cause water to heat up in its stainless steel tray. Once a guest has moved on, the exhibit resets itself by rotating the cloverleaf formation to a new water tray, allowing the experiment to start anew.

Chicago Scenic interacted with a variety of firms to complete the exhibit, including Media Producer Cortina Productions, who developed the interactive software for the touch screen guest control. Other partners included audio-visual systems designer Mad Systems, who developed the master AV controls for the entire Exhibit Hall and Cort, a German company, which provided the heliostat.