London Science Museum

London, UK

With a rich history stemming back to 1857 and a collection of more than 300,000 items that chart scientific, technological and medical achievements from across the globe, the Science Museum is one of London’s major tourist attractions.

Its vast collection attracts more than 3.3m visitors each year who flock to the museum to see the first jet engine, the oldest surviving steam locomotive - Puffing Billy, Stephenson’s Rocket, a replica of James Watson’s model of DNA and other famous items.

In October 2016 the museum enhanced its educational offering with the addition of its new Wonderlab gallery. Spread across 7 different zones, the interactive gallery allows children to see and experience real scientific wonders – they can order experiments at the chemistry bar, take part in scientific demonstrations, see lighting strike before their eyes, or travel through space under a canopy of stars.

Bournemouth based lighting designers - Michael Grubb Studios were chosen to help with the design of the galley’s light related science projects and specified several of UFO’s fibre optic and LED lighting systems.

Several hundred tails of our polymer fibre, clear acrylic star lenses and multiple LED light sources were used to create the twinkling starry nightscape that adorns the ceiling in the Aurora space project. Our installation engineers installed the items on site and used our mixed diameter polymer fibre to give the points of light a three dimensional near-and-far effect.

Over in the gallery’s Light Lab section can learn about the main properties of light, how it travels in straight lines and doesn’t bend around objects using the light table. We were asked to fabricate a mechanism which would emit patterns of light onto the table’s surface. In doing so, we mounted 5 Xicato 300K LEDs onto heat sinks and concealed them inside the table along with an interchangeable brushed stainless steel template that projects patterns of light onto the table’s surface.

We also fabricated the small cylindrical lens tower that can be seen emitting a vertical stream of lighting, in the above image. The tower is constructed from aluminium and contains a Cree MKR 300K LED that has been mounted onto a heat sink. A projection lens is housed within the tower and is protected by a thin layer of polycarbonate acrylic that prevents dust and water from damaging the unit.

Images courtesy of The Science Museum