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How did you know that helium was a so much more valuable than the balloons themselves as a kid?
by mikeklaas 16y ago
How did you know that helium was a so much more valuable than the balloons themselves as a kid?
- sliverstorm 16y agoI knew that helium was lighter than air, and suspected it escaped our atmosphere, so I figured we wouldn't be able to get it back. The balloon on the other hand, while not recyclable, didn't leave the planet.
- ars 16y agoThe balloon is latex and self-recycles. The string though - that's bad.
- sliverstorm 16y agoWell, I was a kid, and didn't know that latex was bio-degradable
- jacquesm 16y agoThat's quite an amazing train of thought for a young kid, especially the 'escaped our atmosphere' bit.
- regularfry 16y agoI think it's very easy to forget exactly how active, and imaginative, a child's mind is.
- kragen 16y agoI thought every science-minded kid had this same thought.
- jacquesm 16y agoThe escaped our atmosphere bit is actually pretty advanced physics. Most kids would assume that the helium would form a spherical shell if they knew about gravity. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Atmospheric_escape http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Atmospheric_escape
- kragen 16y agoWell, people can happen on the right prediction for the wrong reasons. I'm sure I didn't know about thermal atmospheric escape when I thought this, or probably even that a gas at a temperature consisted of molecules with a random distribution of kinetic energies centered on that temperature. I think I just thought that there would always be stuff denser than helium that would push it further and further away from the earth, without limit. (This is almost true, but most of the solar system is filled with hydrogen, which is less dense than helium.)