Learning about the physics of the aurora borealis usually means a lecture, a diagram, a photo on a screen — abstract for an audience of elementary-aged museum visitors who learn best by touching and doing. Fiske Planetarium needed an exhibit that turned charged-particle physics into something a seven-year-old could adjust, watch change, and understand.

Built for CU Boulder's ATLS/CSCI 4519: Design a Science Exhibit, taught in collaboration with makers, scientists, and science communicators Eddie Goldstein, Ann Eisenberg, Wayne Seltzer, and Michael Banks. I worked alongside teammates Erin Fels, Julia McKeag, Ayesha Rawal, Sylvia Robles, and Kira Warren.

My role spanned science communication, research, and the interactive digital prototype. I translated the underlying atmospheric physics — charged solar particles funneling through Earth's magnetic poles, colliding with oxygen and nitrogen at varying altitudes to produce distinct colors — into an accessible, joyful experience, and built and iterated on the digital aurora simulation based on teammate and instructor feedback.

Instead of a screen-based simulation, we made the invisible physics tangible. Visitors step up to a dashboard of sliders and buttons and "cook up" their own aurora by adjusting altitude, geomagnetic activity, light pollution, and proximity to the poles. Each combination drives a real-time Pepper's Ghost illusion that renders their custom aurora in the air in front of them, and they leave with a printed recipe card of their creation. We tested it at Fiske Planetarium and showed it at the ATLAS Expo, guided throughout by one principle: idiot-proof, unbreakable, and genuinely fun.