save me from the smart children
- Thread starter Leslie
- Start date
Professur
Well-Known Member
Latex is an organic substance. It has a stretchy molecular latice. As it stretches, the latice opens, allowing the tiny helium (and hydrogen, should you be adventurous enough) to weep out. This is why Mylar baloons stay inflated. They don't stretch at all. But once the baloon deflates to a certain point, the latice closes up enough to retain what's left inside.
unclehobart
New Member
Yeppers. Balloon latex is a rather pourous substance. Helium weeps out fast at the start and then slower and slower all the time.
A.B.Normal
New Member
The helium Faeries get tired playing with the balloon after a couple hours and just let the balloon fall to earth.It just looks smaller because gravity is stronger the closer you get to the ground and pushes the sides of the balloon in making it smaller.
A.B.Normal said:The helium Faeries get tired playing with the balloon after a couple hours and just let the balloon fall to earth.It just looks smaller because gravity is stronger the closer you get to the ground and pushes the sides of the balloon in making it smaller.
Who needs science when yer got imagination?
unclehobart
New Member
...When rubber balloons are filled with helium so that they float (restrained by ribbons or strings) they can hold their shape for only a few hours. The enclosed air or helium escapes through small pores, and helium atoms being much smaller than the nitrogen and oxygen molecules in air, it escapes much quicker. Even a perfect rubber membrane eventually loses helium to the outside, and its contents are contaminated by oxygen and nitrogen migrating inward from the outside. The gases in question actually dissolve in the rubber on one side and are released from solution on the other. The process by which a substance migrates from a region of high concentration, through a barrier to a region of lower concentration is called osmosis. The inside of balloons can be treated with a special spray (e.g. "Hi Float" brand) to reduce the helium leakage...
Professur
Well-Known Member
Leslie said:well it worked...they got it and didn't ask me any other questions, so I guess it was enough.
...but they did flop down in disgust and go...but it's not FAIR!!!
I discovered a long time ago, that the best way to stop the "why's" is to deluge them with more information than they can possibly handle right off the bat. They go into shock and learn not to ask again.
