CHICAGO (March 18, 2010)—Be blown away by a 40-foot tornado swirling before you. See bolts of lightning crack over your head. Trigger an avalanche. Unleash a tsunami wave. 

It’s all possible in Science Storms, an unprecedented and dramatic permanent exhibit in Allstate Court that reveals the extraordinary science behind some of nature’s most powerful and compelling phenomena—tornados, lightning, fire, tsunamis, sunlight, avalanches and atoms in motion. Science Storms was awarded the Excellence in Exhibition award in 2011, the top honor by the American Association of Museums.

“Creating transformative experiences that get people excited about the world around them is what the Griffin Museum of Science and Industry does best, and exhibits like Science Storms are our most powerful teaching tools,” said David Mosena, president and CEO of the Griffin Museum of Science and Industry.  

Inside the 26,000-square-foot exhibit, you’ll investigate the basic principles of chemistry and physics that are responsible for nature’s biggest wonders, while you get a hands-on, up-close look at these wonders themselves. Science Storms puts you in the middle of the action and lets you search for answers as to how and why things happen in nature.

• Immerse yourself in a 40-foot tornado to experiment with air pressure and wind speed inside a towering vortex of vapor.
• Create a high-voltage lightning storm by discharging volts of energy from a giant Tesla coil, 20 feet in diameter, to discover electricity and magnetism.
• Ignite and control fires within a glass cube to witness the flame’s behavior and reaction to different conditions. 
• Make your own giant rainbows with optical prisms, recreating Newton’s famous prism experiment to observe the physical nature of light. 
• Transform water into vapor, then into ice and back to water again to explore states of matter. 
• Trigger a 20-foot avalanche to reveal the beauty of granular dynamics.
• Discover the power and motion of waves by unleashing your own tsunami across a 30-foot wave tank. 

As you investigate each of these forces of nature, you’ll experience dynamic media presentations that explore the science behind the phenomena—featuring leading researchers and scientists from NASA, NOAA, the United States Geological Survey, Harvard University, the University of Chicago and many more. Interspersed throughout the exhibit are important artifacts that help you to further understand the various scientific principles at work. Among them, you’ll see: 

• The oil drop apparatus that Robert Millikan used in his 1923 Nobel prize-winning experiment to measure the charge of a single electron for the very first time. 
• A giant Deep Ocean Assessment and Reporting of Tsunamis (DART) buoy used for detecting tsunamis and transmitting warnings. The buoy, decommissioned by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) in 2008, recorded a tsunami resulting from an 8.3-magnitude earthquake in the Kuril Islands in Russia. 
• A light bulb that was used at the historic 1879 New Year’s Eve demonstration of the Edison Lighting System in Menlo Park, New Jersey. This was the first time light bulbs were lit for the public.  

Science Storms is brought to you through the generosity of The Allstate Corporation, The Allstate Foundation, Mr. and Mrs. David W. Grainger and The Grainger Foundation. Additional major funding is provided by the U.S. Department of Energy.

Science Storms is included in Museum Entry.