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.