While Ideum is a one-stop shop in terms of exhibit design, we often find ourselves working with partners to create engaging educational interactives. One such partner is Clark Planetarium. Located in Salt Lake City, Utah, Clark Planetarium’s mission is to “inspire and engage curious minds by connecting people to the wonder of the universe”. 

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In addition to their robust planetarium filled with a variety of static and interactive exhibits, they also have a talented production team that creates full-dome shows, music shows, and interactive exhibits in-house. Many of their interactive exhibits are designed to work with Ideum touch tables; the multi-user experience combined with the durable build is a perfect fit for planetariums, science centers, and other exhibit spaces. Current exhibits available with our touch tables are Gravity Lab, Colonize Mars, and the popular Stellar Playground.

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We have showcased Stellar Playground in the past, specifically in tandem with our unique ultrawide Pano multitouch table, though it can be used on our standard-size tables as well. This interactive exhibit supports upwards of 6 - 10 players, inviting them to create solar systems from a palette of suns and planets, all while teaching about the life cycles of each celestial body and their effects on other surrounding bodies. Users can work together to create systems that sustain life and branch out into the cosmos, or they can sow the seeds of chaos by creating black holes that wreak havoc on all other nearby systems.

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In the above video, users play Stellar Playground on the ultrawide Ideum Pano touch table.

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Gravity Lab explores the interconnectedness of matter and energy as well, albeit in a very different way. The puzzle game challenges players to use gravity wells to their advantage in order to manipulate particle beams into specific targets. As we learned in Stellar Playground, black holes affect everything around them, so users must work together to strategically place and move each gravity well to avoid obstacles and hit targets, navigating through a series of increasingly challenging levels.

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And last, but certainly not least, is Colonize Mars, which invites users to work together to develop a successful colony on our favorite red planet. Reminiscent of traditional colony and city sim games, this exhibit teaches players to work together to harvest resources, build structures, and develop and maintain production chains. Objectives increase in complexity as time passes, and the ultimate goal is to create a colony capable of sustaining human life and producing “science” in as short a time as possible. If players beat the timer, they may be able to add their name to the daily and all-time high score leaderboards.

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These exhibits all run flawlessly on our flat top touch tables, including the Platform II, Pro, Pico, and Colossus, and can be purchased as turnkey exhibits directly from Ideum. You can learn more about the full suite of Clark Planetarium exhibits by visiting them in Salt Lake City, or you can find them (and an Ideum touch table) at Domefest West, May 2-5 2024, in Boulder, Colorado.