0150: "Grownups"

[dskippy]

About how many cubic feet do 1500 balls take up? The room I'm thinking of using is around 10' x 11', and I want to go around 3' deep, and I'm wondering how many I need.

Well, my ball pit is a little less than two feet deep I'd say. It's under a queen size bed so the lofted frame that acts as the boundary is 5' X 7". That's roughly 70 cubic feet but there's also a little sofa in there so that there's a place to sit outside the balls and takes up some of the volume, making the rest of it deeper. So I don't really know how many cubic feet I have in practice. But there's an on-line calculator inspired by Randall's comic.

http://www.chiliahedron.com/ballroom/

Good luck...

[LE4dGOLEM]

http://www.chiliahedron.com/ballroom/

Wow. Somebody found Chiliahedron independant of root/relsqui


EDIT: So basically, that kind of costs means you get either the balls or half a car for the same kind of money

[ptveite]

I actually work at an amusement park as a summer job, and one of the things in the kids area is a place with a lot of foam balls and stuff for them to interact with. They actually take the balls, bag them, and run them through a washing machine about once a week.

[Sprocket]

Awe. You joined the forums on your birthday.

[The Panophobic]

EDIT: So basically, that kind of costs means you get either the balls or half a car for the same kind of money

This makes me think- what if you had an SUV/ station wagon and filled the trunk of it with playpen balls? It would be portable, and you'd need fewer balls, so it'd be less expensive.

[Arabella]

I read this thread reeelallly slowly so it wouldn't have to end. But then it did. I'm not really a realy grownup yet but this idea is still so appealing. Mmm I love this one.

[Sprocket]

Ok Arabella, for you - this thread continues.....
Ummm... Hi people. Skippy's ball pit now contains 20 or so balls from the Randall MIT talk. That's exciting...right?

[Arabella]

Thank you. But it's ok. I'm distracted by zeppelins and magic lifts now. And terrible puns. zeppelins+magic lifts+terrible puns almost= ball pit joy. Maybe.

[alexthesoso]

Theres a service that cleans the balls for places, they come in with a giant vacuum cleaner type thing, suck up and bag up the balls, tie them in large mesh bags, dunk them in tanks of stuff back at the place of business, let them dry outside, and then take them back in a couple days.

a friend of mine used to always talk about heading over there with a truck, grabbing sevearl of the bags, and speeding off.

[noonie]

Even so, try to find them cheap enough to fill an apartment for under a few thousand dollars.

baby gates and just fill one room. like my ferrets used to have their own room to destroy, adults can have a play room too. i think if you have $40k to blow on something that silly, you really should just do it. it's almost a sin not to.

i always fancied the idea of having my basement as a swimming pool with floating furniture. i'm such a light sleeper that if i rolled off the bed in the middle of the night i'd wake up anyway. why not have a softer landing with a splash?

[bschaap]

Though this doesn't follow the exact format laid out in the comic, the University Laboratory High School of Urbana, Illinois class of 2007's senior prank http://www.uni.uiuc.edu/og/2007/05/audio_slideshow_senior_prank_2.htm (last 35 seconds of film) was to fill their lounge up with balloons. This was inspired by the comic "Grownups" (#150) after it was determined that playpen balls would be too expensive, as noted in the alt text.

[AltoidAddict]

c) filling a room up with packing paper (what movers wrap glassware in) is also fun, but not as fun as packing peanuts. it is quite like playing in a pile of leaves but minus the dirty.

A few years ago, some friends of mine living in the dorms here had a friendly prank war. THey went out and collected all the free newspapers they could find around campus, crumpled them up, and put them behind an improvised wall in a dead end hall, while the guys in the rooms were sleeping. Much fun was had in the morning.





Although I do agree that a ball pit would be more awesome.

[JVM]

While not exactly as fun as plastic balls, I found some 4ft party balloons at Dollarama (Canada) and bought 20 of them ($1 each). My friend was on his honeymoon (coming home today:) so we filled his bedroom with them.

Enjoy.

[duncky wuncky]

I once filled a corridor with space hoppers. We had to blow them up before giving them out to punters at a disco. So for somewhere to keep them we filled a corridor up. When we were finished they were nearly to the roof, so the obvious thing to do jump on top and play around. It was all good until the door at the end of the corridor opened and the space hoppers with me on top started to empty into another room.

[Master Gunner]

It was all good until the door at the end of the corridor opened and the space hoppers with me on top started to empty into another room.

One word: Awesome.

[Powder]

If Chiliahedron's math is right and you ordered from this site ( http://www.gnwco.com/playball.html ) you could fill a 16' * 12' room 3' deep with 3" balls for 14 cents a ball (10 boxes) for a grand total of $788 and change.

That seems a lot better than the $8000 estimate from the original calculation on the first page!

[Wired]

Or if you just want to be cheap, go into Chuck E. Cheese's on a slow (Very slow) day. I've never seen any cameras in Chuck E. Cheese's. But who knows? Things may have changed in the past... seven years.
Or you can rent an inflatable ball pit for like a hundred bucks per day.

Besides what would you do after the playpen balls after you got tired of them?

[Cassi]

How could you ever get tired of them?!

[GrimHaven]

A friend and I did have a ball pit in our apartment for a while...

For some reason, a local Chucky Cheese had decided to toss all of the balls they had and replace them (I think it had something to do with a sanitary lifespan in their regs or something because I believe they normally wash them). Thats all of the balls in the giant ball pit... in the dumpster.. just sitting there.. begging us to take them home...

... so we did

We, of course, washed and sanitized them after the nightmare of transportation (and yes it took an enormous amount of work to transport them back to our place... after a few loads in the car we borrowed a pickup truck and grabbed some more friends).

One of the bedrooms in our place was lower than the main floor and entry was by way of 4 or 5 steps, giving us the perfect place for our "ball-room".

It was awesome.... 20ft long by 10 ft wide and about 3ft deep... you could just dive through the door...

There was one large downside though... Lose your car keys? guess your walking... Lighter fall out of your pocket? try matches... That and if you fall asleep in the pit, sooner or later someones gonna step on you, lol...

I still miss that apartment for that sole reason...

I never truely realised how many balls we had (quit snickering) until I started doing the math to recreate it now... 20ftx10ftx3ft = a hell of a lot of plastic balls.

[IrishFire]

I MUST have the last frame of this comic in t-shirt and greeting-card form.

[TheKhakinator]

Now bouncy castles. They are awesome.

I must get a ball pit sometime.... sadly I don't know any cool people. YEAH TAKE THAT PEOPLE I KNOW! HA!

[bbctol]

Grimhaven is the luckiest man/woman/human organism in the world.

[Domovoi]

...

[Cassi]

...That is AMAZING. I hope you plan to take pictures.

[Arancaytar]

Funny thing is, I discovered Questionable Content through this website. How backwards am I?

I discovered Questionable Content through Darcey's webcomic site, which I discovered through her forum profile on this site. Beat that for backwards.

[alice]

2000 balls is not a lot. It covers the floor of my cubicle at work but that's about it.



There's a little more about it at my blog, I might post more there later about the experience.

[bbctol]

That is truly, truly awesome. I envy you and your presumably-lax-standarded boss.

[monkeykoder]

Too bad I share my apartment with my dad after reading this thread I've been eying that walk in closet...

[arbivark]

http://www.maniacworld.com/skateboardin ... loons.html
that is all

[Moo]

RE: skateboarding with balloons:
THAT.IS.THE.SECOND.COOLEST.THING.EVER

[nyeguy]

http://www.maniacworld.com/skateboarding-with-1000-balloons.html
that is all

I have to try something like this. That is awesome.

[Murgatroyd]

If Chiliahedron's math is right and you ordered from this site ( http://www.gnwco.com/playball.html ) you could fill a 16' * 12' room 3' deep with 3" balls for 14 cents a ball (10 boxes) for a grand total of $788 and change.

That seems a lot better than the $8000 estimate from the original calculation on the first page!

You did that calculation based on a 3" radius. The balls have a 3" diameter = 1.5" radius. A factor of 2 in each of 3 dimensions means multiplying by 8, for a cost of about $6244 (give or take a few boxes). Not such an improvement.

[Crouchosarus]

Well, I'm in my school's marching band, and play the quads. Because of this, I have one of the two biggest lockers in the band room. I am considering filling my locker with playpen balls, and based on the calculator it will cost around $300. Totally worth it.

[Clumpy]

I wish I had your boss/work environment, Alice. Anything you can do to make work more like the Chuck-E-Cheese is fine in my book.

[Spoffin]

I read this thread reeelallly slowly so it wouldn't have to end.

This almost made me cry.

I had to admit today that I would probably never own a ball pit.
That hurt so much that instead of accepting the fact, I arranged to buy 700 second hand balls.

Its not enough, but its a start. And Christmas is right around the corner.

[lavkian]

Today I was in the cafeteria with my friend Janieve, and we're eating lunch after class. She laid her Lipton Tea bottle cap on the table, and I batted it across and she batted it back. It turned into a full-fledged game of air hockey, which we played for half an hour.

This is on a ~3x3' wooden table in the middle of a relatively crowded community college cafeteria. Fortunately the table was to ourselves, but most of the tables around us were occupied.

The whole time, especially whenever the cap flew off the table completely and some student gave us weird looks, all I could think of was this comic. "It's our turn to decide what that means."

Unfortunately, lovemaking did not immediately follow said game, but the concept was still there.

['; DROP DATABASE;--]

i always fancied the idea of having my basement as a swimming pool with floating furniture. i'm such a light sleeper that if i rolled off the bed in the middle of the night i'd wake up anyway. why not have a softer landing with a splash?

I want a room where water runs down the walls and/or sprays from a fountain in the middle, and there's always about an inch of water on the floor. And a button to start the Zelda OoT Zora Cavern theme on endless loop.

[Poekie]

I just had to register to tell this: my boyfriend and I have been xkcd-fans for some time and today, for Valentine's day, he did the sweetest thing..
My room has a small hallway next to it where a toilet and shower cubicle are. He had filled it with about 5000 playpen balls, together with a big printout of the "Grownups" comic. He had kept it secret for me so it was a complete surprise when I opened the door and my first thought was 'ooooooh, sweeeeeet! ♥' (Literally, that heart. Just like the comic!) The fact that I really had to pee and there was no way in hell I could get to my toilet was completely forgotten.
The pit was more than waist high and you could completely disappear in it. It was a terrible mess once the balls came rolling into my room, but it was soooo much fun and such a sweet idea..... Thanks for the idea Randall!!!

I now have a ballpit which is constructed of segments of couch and which is about hip height and 3m2 .... But I can't keep it forever because the room it's in now is not mine but not rented out at the moment, it's such a shame I don't have the space in my own room.

[antinea]

i come a bit late to the discussion.. but just wantd to add that the video of slateboarding in 8000 balloons has a poetic beauty.. when i see that everytime he crosses, ALL the balloons move i realize that the same happens if there were no balloons around the air (only it's invisible).

i'm looking to buy a house / apartment, my only requirement is a large empty room that i can dance in. that is more important for me than a ball pit.

[DannysARocker]

I had the joy of being with a girl for a couple of months about this time last year. She was hugely obsessed with movies, and I'm hugely obsessed with music. Sometimes we'd find a happy balance, other times I'd get piss bored and wonder off to do something else.

On this night, we were watching Anchorman. I had already seen it several times, and started looking around for something else to do. Then the idea came to me; she had two bunks that were never used (I slept over, so we slept together on the futon which was larger and her roommate spent the night over at her boyfriends every night) and several spare blankets. I got up, strung a blanket between the bunks over the window and another blanket between the bunks on the other side blocking access to most of their room. A dresser blocked off the front of one bunk, and I hung a blanket over another. Finally, I pulled a comforter between the top of the two bunks and got some books to hold it down; viola, a fort. Best part was, she had a party the next night. I can't tell you how many times I answered the question 'Why do you have a fort?' My reply? 'Because it's awesome, what better reason do you need?!'