ASTRONOMY

The National Center for Supercomputing Applications (NCSA) contributed new versions of its famous data-driven visualizations of how tornadoes form—already seen by millions in PBS NOVA's Hunt for the Supertwister—to the new permanent exhibit, Science Storms at Chicago's Museum of Science and Industry (MSI). The exhibit reveals the extraordinary science behind some of nature's most powerful and compelling phenomena—tornadoes, lightning, fire, tsunamis, sunlight, avalanches, and atoms in motion.

NCSA's visualizations are part of an interactive kiosk, created by Cortina Productions, that allows museum guests to manipulate the key factors of wind speed, air temperature, and moisture within a Midwestern farm landscape to create the conditions that are right for the formation of a tornado, unleashing their own digital storms.

Donna Cox, leader of NCSA's Advanced Visualization Laboratory (AVL) and director of the Illinois eDream Institute, hosts the interactive touch-screen experience, guiding guests as they set their conditions and explaining the basics of how a tornado forms. Museum-goers can watch a short visualization of a tornado, based on data from a computational simulation; Cox describes how her team's visualization represents the scientific data (green and yellow pyramid glyphs represent wind speed and direction, for example) and how the simulation compares to the real storm that struck in Manchester, South Dakota.

Science Storms is included in general admission. Science Storms is brought to you through the generosity of Allstate, The Allstate Foundation, and The Grainger Foundation. Additional major funding has been provided by the United States Department of Energy. For more information about MSI or Science Storms, visit msichicago.org.

Team members
Scientific visualization

• Donna Cox, director, Advanced Visualization Laboratory and eDream
• Jeff Carpenter, AVL and eDream
• Robert Patterson, AVL and eDream
• Stuart Levy, AVL
• Alex Betts, AVL
• Matthew Hall. AVL
• Kelly Searsmith. eDream

Scientific simulation

• Robert Wilhelmson, NCSA, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign
• Brian Jewett, Department of Atmospheric Science, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign
• Glen Romine, National Center for Atmospheric Research
• Matthew Gilmore, Department of Atmospheric Sciences, University of North Dakota
• Lou Wicker, National Severe Storms Laboratory, National Oceanographic and Atmospheric Administration