These are pictures of the inside of the inflatable planetarium... cool huh?
Today's blog post will be about the El Paso Science Network and making giant DIY planetariums. I made two planetariums for the two day Space Odyssey Training that we had during our Summer Science Academy and the teachers in our network wanted to make them for their campuses, so with the help of Carmen Imai and Ernie Herrera, 16 giant DIY planetariums were made on a Saturday in January (which actually means 16 campuses now have really cool inflatable planetariums. Here is what you need to make the planetarium:
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I ran into this idea from the NASA JPL website and there is a complete video on how to build it there. However theirs is completely black. I actually built the black one and this hybrid during the summer and decided that the hybrid was actually better because it was more versatile. Just follow the instructions with this video: http://www.jpl.nasa.gov/edu/teach/activity/inflatable-planetarium/ |
This inflatable planetarium is really cool when it has a clear top (which is not really all that clear, its more like white, which makes it a great surface to shine an infocus projector on. I connected my ipad to the projector and used apps such as SKYWALK to project the constellations of the night sky. Google Earth and other really cool spacey apps look fantastic on the ceiling of this planetatarium. If all the lights are shut off in the room, the planetarium will get really dark, which is a great place to do demonstrations for moon phases, earth moon and sun models, moon pop models and to demonstrate the seasons. This size planetarium held 40 teachers last summer, so you can easily fit two classes at a time during a session. My 8th graders really loved the planetarium to study seasons and we are about to use it to study the birth and life of stars. Because it has a fan blowing into it, it does not get hot in there, which is great when you are working with kids after PE. This planetarium is great for science nights, classroom movies and you can even convert it into a giant cell or other types of science models. It only takes about 30 minutes to make. Go on, you know you want to. -Techscichick! :)