Like, say you had a grain silo or some theoretical structure that would allow you to fill the structure as high as you wanted, full of balloons, all inflated with regular air, not helium.

Is there a point where the balloons’ collective miniscule weight would be enough to pop the balloons on the bottom? Or would they just bounce/float on top of each other forever and ever?

  • @[email protected]
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    21 year ago

    Damn that’s a good question.

    Depends on the stretchiness of the material. Even without a confined space, but in a theoretical magically fixed balloon tower, I’m going to say that they’d bounce forever. The reasoning being that at some point the bottom balloon would be fully stretched but since it can push against the second balloon, which is not yet fully stretched, it can make that stretch, so it wouldn’t necessarily burst. Continuing this feedback effect upwards it would mean the average balloon only needs to hold its own weight.