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Thursday, October 22, 2009

Fun With Helium




IN LIGHT OF THE RECENT HOAX ABOUT THE 6-YEAR OLD CHILD WHO WAS THOUGHT TO HAVE GONE ALOFT IN A HELIUM BALLOON, I found this on YouTube. It appears to be real, and looks fun. I guess the risk is, just how high might one go? This could depend on your weight, size of pants and ability of the pants to expand and hold more helium. For me, I’ll stick to making my voice sound like Donald Duck the next time a tank of helium shows up at a party.
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11 comments:

  1. kerliOctober 22, 2009 at 5:12 AM

    It seems to me that he should float upside down, if he filled his pants with helium, though....

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  2. John FosterOctober 22, 2009 at 5:50 AM

    Hmmm, true Keri.

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  3. CFLangerOctober 22, 2009 at 7:11 AM

    Oooh I SO would have done this when I was a teenager! Now I'd probably break a hip. :o)

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  4. carmackartOctober 22, 2009 at 9:23 AM

    This comment has been removed by the author.

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  5. CvDOctober 22, 2009 at 10:58 AM

    I don't buy it, not at all!

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  6. AnonymousOctober 22, 2009 at 11:57 AM

    kerli is absolutely right...and what clothes are airtight anyway? ...but maybe if you had some kind of 70's jumpsuit it would work.

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  7. Jens AlfkeOctober 22, 2009 at 12:41 PM

    This has to be totally fake — helium just doesn't have that much lifting power. Think about it reasonably for a few seconds...

    Consider a party balloon; it can lift a pound at most. Then consider how many party balloons you could stuff into an empty pair of sweatpants. Maybe 20 at most? Great, that's maybe 20 pounds of lift if you're being very generous ... and that's without anyone being inside the pants taking up most of the room.

    That's not to mention the fact that the helium would leak through the fabric almost instantly. The kid in the video didn't look like he was wearing rubber pants.

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  8. Dr Max RosaOctober 22, 2009 at 3:29 PM

    This is a viral video created for Levi jeans. Not real. Fun though.

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  9. John FosterOctober 22, 2009 at 10:27 PM

    You know, I am usually more hip than this... I should have spotted the signs. Still— when it comes to viral videos—this is good. Let's face it... how many have seen this video? It's good.

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  10. JimROctober 24, 2009 at 8:02 AM

    Yeah it's good. But like Jens said, only a party balloon can't lift anywhere near a pound. My sons and I always try to see how heavy a thing we can lift at parties that have helium balloons. A single balloon can often get a single pencil into the air. I think it would take a dozen or so balloons to get a pound into the air. There is a reason why blimps are incredibly huge

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  11. GregOctober 28, 2009 at 9:37 PM

    Fascinating site you have here. My first visit. Regarding this video, in 2004 Mythbusters did a segment on how many helium balloons it would take to lift a small child into the air. It was a little girl who weighed 44 pounds. This wasn't something they worked out on a calculator - they actually filled the balloons until she went a few feet in the air. How many balloons? How about 3500? I was blown away. It's mentioned here:
    http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MythBusters_%282004_season%29
    (hopefully that link posts correctly).

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