Kansas City’s Science City is celebrating 25 years of operation through the addition of a “Light Lab” opening in May 2025.
The exhibit aims to teach people about the world of light through engaging and educational experiences. They will feature optics and illumination displays and showcase concepts such as physics, chemistry and mathematics.
The Light Lab follows the 2023 Burns & McDonnell Battle of the Brains competition, where a student team from Delta Woods Middle School won first place in their proposal for an electromagnetic exhibit.
They received the opportunity to partner with Burns & McDonnell, the company behind Science City, to make their ideas a one million dollar reality.
The students proposed expositions of everyday applications of the electromagnetic spectrum, how light interacts with matter and transfers into heat energy, the workings of ultraviolet light and how to create white light using prisms.
Science City has been a Kansas City staple since 1999 and provides a venue in Union Station for everyone to be a part of. They have over 300 interactive exhibits and host many STEM-based events, including the annual Greater Kansas City Science & Engineering Fair.
It is consistently voted Kansas City’s favorite family-friendly attraction and named one of the top science centers in the country.
For many college students, Science City is a place only tied to childhood memories.
Sophomore health science major Nikki Mccoy is from St. Joseph, Missouri and said the only time she has been to Science City was on a field trip in third grade. She did not know about the new exhibit, but said she would be interested in visiting.
This science museum is constantly evolving, offering engaging experiences such as the Light Lab that can still captivate visitors well into adulthood. For students who haven’t been back since they were young, revisiting can be both a nostalgic trip and a chance to see science through a new lens.
“I’ve visited Science City recently,” said freshman cybersecurity major Lexi Russell. “I went and walked around with friends to relive it and see if it was as cool as I remember, because I last visited when I was like 9-years-old. It was awesome.”
Russell also said she did not know Light Lab was coming to Science City, but she thought the concept of introducing light waves to kids is a good idea.
