Near the end of 2019, we had the pleasure of building a sandbox for Wonderlab Museum of Science, Health and Technology in Bloomington, Indiana, for their SandScapes Augmented Reality Sandbox.
The sandbox has wheelchair access on one end, and a locking storage cabinet on the other.
In keeping with their technology theme, the cage above the sandbox holding all the electronics was left uncovered so that visitors could see the tech driving the exhibit.
Museum staff really wanted to showcase the unique geological feature of the Indiana Uplands area around Bloomington.
This area is dominated by a karst formation that is susceptible to water infiltration and frequent sinkhole development.
The biome we created for them detects when visitors dig out sinkholes in the sand. It then looks for a location farther down the side of the terrain, and places a bubbling natural well there. Any rain water or river runoff that falls into the sinkhole, later flows out of the linked well downslope
