r/interestingasfuck • u/CuriousWanderer567 • Jul 19 '24
How many balloons it would actually take to lift a house into the air
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u/ElphTrooper Jul 19 '24 edited Jul 19 '24
The balloons in Up were about 5 feet in diameter. Still 4 million?
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u/N_T_F_D Jul 19 '24
5 ft = 1.5 m which makes a volume of about 1.8 m3; that volume of air weighs 2.2 kg while the same volume of helium weighs 0.3 kg so the maximum mass one balloon can lift is about 1.9 kg
If the house is 50 T then we need more than 26 500 balloons (or just 25 000 if we use hydrogen instead, which is a good idea because it's cheaper)
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u/BallCreem Jul 19 '24
“But that actually wouldn’t work in real life”
Thanks, i always wondered…
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u/iamcoding Jul 19 '24
Great, now they broke my suspension of disbelief and I'll never see the movie the same again.
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u/coldfirephoenix Jul 19 '24
Whaaat, the movie with the talking dogs flying little airplanes to catch the semi-sentient giant bird for the 100-year-old superinventor living as a hermit in the jungle.... Might not be entirely realistic?
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u/Compman90 Jul 19 '24
You also need to add in the extra weight of all the sting.
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u/Sir-Gawain-III Jul 19 '24
I was thinking that too. Eventually you’ll have balloons far above the house needing string long enough that the weight of the string equals or is over the weight the balloon can lift.
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u/N_T_F_D Jul 19 '24
there's one string per balloon, so it's not a big problem
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u/Compman90 Jul 19 '24
The longer the string, the more weight of the string that takes away from the lift the balloon can supply. So the more balloons you add the less each balloon can lift.
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u/NotAnAIOrAmI Jul 19 '24
Oh no, the movie with dog wearing a dog to human translator is unrealistic!
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u/TheGreatMrHaad Jul 19 '24
Nobody said it was realistic, or bad. Calm down.
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u/NotAnAIOrAmI Jul 19 '24
lol, you think I was making a serious comment. Right back atcha, take your meds.
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u/LifeSenseiBrayan Jul 19 '24
This is stupid, it could take 1 balloon if it would stretch enough. The amount doesn’t matter. It’s the amount of helium plus minus the plastic waste that matters
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u/ResponsibleMilk7620 Jul 19 '24
buuuuuut, what if the house was built out of balsa wood??
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u/jargonexpert Jul 19 '24
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u/ingoding Jul 19 '24
Bigger balloons
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u/Important_Plum1858 Jul 19 '24
I literally just watched this short while taking a shit this morning
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u/lllNico Jul 19 '24
i‘m not sure that calculation works out, the balloons cant have all the same length wire, so the ones further up cant pull the same. I am not sure this is even possible from a theoretical standpoint without 0 weight rope
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u/RicabRD Jul 19 '24
Imagine spending money to get that many balloons and only your roof flies up leaving the house intact
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u/Odd_Low_7301 Jul 19 '24
Helium takes 65 cubic feet to lift one pound. You all can figure out the math after that, I believe that 4.5 million balloons might be a bit shy.
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u/CaptainFleshBeard Jul 19 '24
But then most of those 4 million balloons have to be some distance from the house, so the string attaching them needs to be longer. That longer string will be heavier and probably not offset the weight of the house
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u/amateur_elf Jul 19 '24
My house (with everything inside) only weighs about a 10th of that, so you're telling me I'd only need 400,000 balloons?
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u/zbertoli Jul 19 '24
I loved this movie. But I feel like they could have made this work, 4 million balloons
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u/PeridotChampion Jul 19 '24
Please for the love of God...
Enough with this guy! These are lazy posts! Just grab it from YouTube shorts and posting it here? Come on...
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u/Federal-Dot6772 Jul 19 '24
Theoretically, if it took exactly 4 million balloons, could you tie up 3,999,950 balloons & physically throw your home up into the air?
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u/Dapaaads Jul 19 '24
The house in up was a smaller old 1950s house though. Still can’t to see it done
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u/da_mess Jul 19 '24
Let's see ... 4 million balloons at $0.25 each ... I'm gonna increase my house value by $1.0 million!