How To Build A Giant Inflatable Planetarium - For Under $300!)

Hi guys, welcome to Beal's Science. You know, I hope you saw the video of this massive inflatable learning lab and all the amazing ways we've used it and I decided I should probably publish a video for how to build one. If you want to know how to use it, there's a link down in the description, but if you want to build one, stick around. I'm going to show you how you can make your own on a budget. Now let me tell you how we got to this point. I had made a giant cardboard planetarium several years ago and I published the instructions for that and I had people from all over the world contact me and ask me, how did you make that? So I put together a how-to on my website. Many years later I was like, wait a minute, and I said I need something new. I need something that's portable, it's lightweight, anybody can set it up and it's very inexpensive to make. And one more thing, I need something that has a different structure that you can use a regular projector to project on the walls, which is how I landed on the shape of this crazy structure, this conical shape, because it gives me flat sides to project upon. Where do you start? Well, you got to decide what shape you want to make. You can make a dome, you can make a cone, you can make any other shape. And we started by making models. Sean Jones, you might remember him from the build where we made the cannon. Yeah, the cannon that shoots bowling balls over two miles. He started to make some models with this and we started to get some dimensions and ultimately we decided on our shape. Once we decided on our shape, we had to figure out what do we want to build this with. I chose to use tarps because tarps are readily available, they're inexpensive, they're easy enough to cut, they're strong, so they'll hold together. And I thought, wow, this thing could be used outside. Figured we'll start with tarps. If that doesn't work, we'll switch gears to something else. Turned out tarps were a great choice. So what other materials do you need? You'll need tarps or fabric or something to make this out of. You're going to need a sewing machine. I chose to purchase a heavy-duty sewing machine and I sure am glad I did because we put that thing through the ringer. We needed heavy-duty sewing needles, you need heavy-duty thread, you're going to need a calculator because there's a whole bunch of calculating going on, and I need to take this moment to thank the folks at Texas Instruments for sponsoring this video so I could show you how to make your own giant inflatable planetarium. You're going to need some good shears, good scissors, tape measure, masonite hardboard so that you can make your templates, a saw and a fan. So all of these materials and all of the instructions are listed at BealsScience.com. Next thing you got to decide is how big should this be. Now I wanted it big enough to fit like an entire classroom of young people. So what I wanted to shoot for was about a 15-foot diameter and about 15-foot tall. That just seemed like a good choice. You could alter your measurements any way you wanted. We chose to go that route so all the calculations that you're going to see are based off of those dimensions. Just alter them slightly depending on what you want. Once you decide on the size, you've got to calculate the size that each piece is going to be to build this. The best place to find information and calculations is DIYPlanetarium.com. Check out the link down in the description. From this point on I pretty much had to invent everything as I went, which to me is the really exciting part of doing all these videos anyway. The sewing line template. First thing we lay out our masonite sheet. Then I'm going to tape a long measuring tape down and I'm going to look at my measurements and I'm going to start right at the very bottom edge and make a straight line. I measure the vertical distance from that point at the center from the edge. So I'm just measuring up towards the point and then measuring out from that center line to make a mark. And I just continue to make those measurements all the way up until I get to the point. And then I took tape to connect all those so I'd have a nice smooth line reaching from the base up towards the very end. Then to finish off your sewing line template you just cut along the blue tape. Now you'll notice that I stopped measuring 10 centimeters away from that point. The reason is I wanted to cut a circle to be the very top so I wouldn't have all of these sort of points bunching up at the very center. The next template you got to make is the cutting line template. We're going to sew along one line but we're going to cut these tarps along a different line. You'll see why in just a moment. Now I wanted my cutting line template three centimeters wider or three centimeters bigger on each side. You can't sew right on your cut line. You've got to have some some overhang to be able to sew. So I took several sheets of masonite and I laid my template that I just cut out across those sheets. Then I measured with a compass three centimeters along the entire edge of one side and the entire edge of another side. I removed my sewing line template and then cut that cutting line template apart. You got to make your big pieces. What I did was laid out my large sections of tarp and then took my cutting line template and I laid that out on the tarp. Took a sharpie, very carefully followed that line all the way to the end across both sides. Then I removed that cutting line template and set the sewing line template down right there. Then I took the sharpie and traced across that. Now you can see I've got two lines. One of those lines is the line I need to cut on. The other line is the line I need to sew on. You cut along that piece and bam! Nice! You've got your first piece. For me, the shape that I made, the size that I made, I need 16 of these pieces. Then you got to sew the pieces together. Well, how do we do that? Well, we started with two pieces and started sewing on that line. What I found was it's totally manageable. It just takes a long time to do it and taking your time was worth it. Just nice and easy. Eventually, the pieces got big enough where I had enough of them together that I did need help. So I had my kids out there helping me on a regular basis. I had grandma helping me. Pretty much anybody that stopped by, if I was out there sewing, I'd be like, hey, can you hang on to... So you are probably going to need some help unless you've got better equipment than I have. Now let me say one thing. What you see throughout all these video clips, it looks like, man, I just did this. Like, just made it. No. There's so much trial and error that goes into this stuff. What you're seeing are the final results. But remember, if you make mistakes, if you make errors, hey, so just keep pushing forward. What do you do about this top piece? Depending on your sizes, the size that you choose to build, you just need to measure the width of where you stop of each one of those pieces. And then you have 16 pieces. Once you have the circumference of your circle, you can figure out the radius. Once you have the radius, you can very easily take a piece of string and a marker with that length and just make a nice circle. And it's just a matter of sewing that top piece on. Now you've got the makings of an inflatable theater planetarium thing. It's pretty close, but you need some way to blow it up. Again, here comes the math. Get out that trusty calculator. Just measured the circumference around the outside of the fan and then took a piece of tarp and figured out, okay, well, it's got to be that long to fit all the way around the outside of the fan. Sewed it together, tied it up, turned the fan on. Look at this. It's moving some serious, serious air. The fan that I chose on high speed moves 3,500 cubic feet per minute, but it has three adjustments. And I found out even on that lowest setting, it was almost more air than we needed. The next thing you need is a way to get into the planetarium or the structure. You could just sneak up under the side. I decided to build an entrance and I wanted a grand entrance because that's how I do things. Like, let's go big. I think I went overkill with this entrance. What I did was I measured a triangle and I wanted that triangle at the peak to be four feet. But really any size will do. In fact, mine could have been about half the size. You can see how big it is. But in hindsight, it ended up being really cool because that was like an extra room in there. I know I needed some air to be able to escape if there's too much air flowing in. Before I had this opening adjusted, I actually blew out the bottom of the planetarium a few times. In other words, so much air was going in there that it started to lift up. One side would come up too high, all the air would escape, and it would crash down. So what I did, I left that opening open. I didn't stitch it closed. And then I used big binder clips to close it up because I figured, okay, I can remove or add binder clips accordingly and it actually works out really well. And then really the last thing I had to do was make sure that the whole thing was sealed up nice and tight. And one thing you might have seen earlier on was when I was cutting, I actually left all the extra tarp at the base. I didn't cut that off. There was a reason for that. It was because I wanted that tarp to be able to lay in on the inside of that planetarium so that it would make a nice flat contact with whatever surface and it wouldn't blow itself apart. Once I had everything finalized and I pulled all those pieces in underneath, I just used some duct tape and taped up all those seams and it works perfectly. And now what do you have left? We're going to use it. What are you going to use it for? You can use it as a planetarium. You can use it as an extra office. You can use it as a remote learning classroom. You can use it as, I don't know, my son's favorite is to use it as a gaming theater to play Xbox. But the possibilities are endless. So I got to tell you the important thing is to have fun, is to inspire people with science, technology, engineering, and math. And like I remind everybody at the end of every one of my videos, keep on learning.