About the Exhibition

Step into an illuminating tunnel of light where 20,000 individual LED lights move in perfect harmony with your every whim.

In Playing With Light, full-body interactive exhibits will encourage you to engage in an array of exciting and amazing light, laser and lens-based experiences. Try to reach your destination without activating an alarm by successfully dodging a series of laser beams. Make yourself shorter, taller, wider and more with the adjustable bendy mirror. Watch your shadow freeze before fading away, experiment with colored lights and find out what happens when one or more color is blocked, make a laser beam bounce down a stream of water and more!

You'll leave with a deeper appreciation of how light plays a vital role in your daily life and how science helps us to describe and explain the behavior of light.

Additional Programing

During the run of the touring exhibition, we’ll feature a wide variety of enlightening programming to expand upon themes in Playing With Light.

• We’re shining light on discovery with a special live demo showing how light is always blocking, bending and bouncing. Make sure you check the schedule for Illuminating Light to explore the mysterious, wondrous and remarkable world of light.
• Science After Dark: GLOW on March 3 is packed with fun hands-on STEM activities that let you sip in the science, step up your accessory game, write secret UV messages, build glowing geometric structures and more.
• You won’t believe your eyes when you see how we explore if cows can see color. That’s right, we’re moo-ving other demos off the schedule to add live cow eye dissections so you can learn about different parts and functions of eyes, how they change over time and the connectedness of the eye-brain system by comparing human eyes to cow eyes.
• Thanks to generous support from the Virginia Eye Institute, Science Museum educators will be offering science à la cart … yes, we meant cart! These mobile STEM stations feature hands-on educational lessons about diffracting colors that make up visible light and using light filters to make text disappear. Look for them throughout the building.
• It’s time to get crafty with color! In the Art Lab, design your own color wheel to investigate what wavelengths make up white light.
• Explore what it takes to grow plants in space in our Eco Lab. View plants in a terrarium and learn how astronauts grow plants using special lights and other features on spacecraft, like the International Space Station.
• Catch a silly, music-filled performance of Shine Bright Speed Light. We’re opening our usually group-only theater presentation for the general public to help you learn how visible light travels at the same, finite, constant speed, no matter what the source.
• Plus, don’t miss the chance to see stars sparkle and the cosmos shine! Add one of our astronomy shows in The Dome onto your visit. Ultra-high-definition projectors and a nearly quarter-acre screen put you at the helm for an interactive space adventure like no other.