Hey! Welcome to Beals Science! Check this thing out! Isn't this crazy?! This has been over a year
of work to get to this point. I'm going to show you how to build it, I'm going to show you how to
use it. The inspiration for this came many, many years ago when I built a cardboard planetarium,
and it was fantastic, and I had groups from all over the world contact me asking me how to make
it. So, I showed everybody how to make it and then I was like, wait a minute, I need something
that's portable, that's lightweight, that anybody can set up, and that inspires learning! Hence
this! Yeah, awesome! The real challenge here is figuring out how to build this. I spent several
months doing calculations, making models, building smaller templates until I got to this point where
I was actually starting to cut and sew and build this massive thing. Now, if you want to make one
I've got all the instructions you would need on another video, the link is in the description.
This is it, we've reached a pivotal moment because now we have to see if all the measurements and
all the cutting are correct. Oh yeah, and I learned how to sew just for this project.
I honestly really probably have no idea what I'm doing. But you know? That's part of the
reason I do all this stuff, is to learn new things like sewing. We're making progress now.
I chose to use tarps for this project because I wanted it to be durable but I also wanted it
to be very affordable. In fact, I made this entire thing for about 500 dollars and if
you didn't need a sewing machine you could do it for under 300 dollars! Today's a big day,
we had to move inside because the backyard, well, it just wasn't big enough anymore!
Let's do this! It's hard to express the amount of joy that I had when we finally
got to this point. You see, I had spent literally hundreds of hours and a year
and a half with this project and I never knew, I never actually knew if it was gonna blow up,
if it was gonna hold air, and if it was gonna stay. But it did! Thankfully!
There's been a lot of people that have helped out on this project but I need to send a big
thank you to Texas Instrument who has sponsored this video so that I can share with you how
you can help inspire young people with science, technology, engineering, and mathematics. And the
very moment I got this thing completed, that's exactly what we did. We brought STEM Society,
our science club, down and got out the projector, fired up the planetarium software, and learned
about the stars and the constellations. And then, to turn it into an astronomy lab, we started
analyzing spectra in the dark environment. I mean, the possibilities are endless!
Right now I'm calling this the Giant Inflatable Space Capsule Learning Lab.
I like that! Or whatever you want to call it, I don't know. And what can this be used for? Well,
it can be used for just about anything! There's a whole bunch of engineering just in the shape and
then how about the science of why this thing blows up? So before we deflate it let's look into that.
It might seem like perfectly commonsensical that you go to an inflatable and it inflates because
you're putting air into it but what's the real physics? What's actually going on here? It all
has to do with pressure and that's why our friends at Texas Instruments are helping me out to show
how that difference in pressure allows this thing to inflate and remain inflated. So
I've got a pressure sensor here. We're going to check the pressure outside and then I'm
going to slide it underneath and see what the pressure is inside. Make a prediction:
where's the higher pressure? To overcome the air pressure pushing down on top of it
you must have higher pressure inside so you can see the higher pressure points inside and when
we take the fan away well that heavy air from the atmosphere pushes down and squishes it. Now,
what else can we do with this? Let's pack this thing up and take it to the backyard because we've
done some serious brainstorming to figure out creative ways to use this inflatable monstrosity!
They came up with lots of ideas but some of the most useful ones were to use it
as an extra office or possibly for remote learning since there's a lot of that going on these days.
But also as an office to hold your zoom calls. My daughter thought that would be appropriate since
there are all sorts of zoom calls going on. But also what about an extra bedroom? It's basically
waterproof so set up a bedroom outside or a place to escape by the fire. And then, of course,
my kids favorite - for video games. Because you can play video games on a massive eight-foot
screen or larger depending on your projector which means you can also be outside and watch movies!
I hope that you find a number of inspiring ways to use a dome if you decide to build one
but maybe you have some ideas for me about how we could use this if you do put them down there
in the comments. Maybe hit the subscribe button, that sure would make me happy and make me want
to make more projects just like this! But the reason I do all of these videos is to remind you
to "Keep on Learning!" And thanks for watching!
And a huge thank you to the Billings Education Foundation who helped fund this build with the
hope that we would spread the joy of STEM and education all around the world