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Monday, February 1, 2010

Chewing gum and helium experiment

There is a YouTube video about an experiment with gum and helium, creating a balloon that can lift a person.
Using the law of hydrostatics, the driving force must be at least equal (as can be seen in a certain part of the video) to the weight of the man with the balloon..
So,
P = I
Replacing the weights by m g and knowing that
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we have
clip_image002
The mass of the man will be
clip_image004
Substituting the values
clip_image002[8]  and
clip_image002[10]
we obtain
clip_image006
and we can drawing the graph mH = mH(R)
clip_image008
We have, for a mass exceeding 65 kg, the diameter of the balloon will be greater than 5 m. Therefore, by observing the video, that isn't the case.
The person has a high less than 2 m, the diameter of the ballon is much less than 2 m.
So the video was fake.
Versão portuguesa

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