• Rai@lemmy.dbzer0.com
      1·
      3 months ago

      When I was in school decades ago, my science teacher brought in a big balloon filled with hydrogen and lit the string on fire without telling us that it was filled with hydrogen.

      I could feel the explosion in my bones. It was neat.

      I’m not sure you could do that in schools today.

  • Cagi@lemmy.ca
    1·
    3 months ago

    Mylar balloons should be outlawed. They get sent free and land on power lines WAY too often. Over a thousand mylar balloon caused power outages are recorded in just Southern California alone in a typical year. The cost of repairing the damage might even exceed the revenue of mylar balloon sales.

  • AllNewTypeFace@leminal.space
    1·
    3 months ago

    Given its scarcity, helium should be more expensive, to the point where filling party balloons with it is decadent profligacy.

    • el_abuelo@programming.dev
      1·
      3 months ago

      I mean it is expensive, it’s just the amount required for a balloon is insignificant and thus seems cheap.

      As a diver who uses helium I can tell you it is, compared to air, so much more expensive they actually charge me for it (rather than just rolled into the cost of a dive) - to the sum of about $300 a dive - depending on depth.

        • el_abuelo@programming.dev
          1·
          3 months ago

          Reducing the amount of narcotic gases in your mix so you don’t act like a drunk idiot when in a life threatening situation.

          Those narcotic gases are nitrogen and oxygen (although there’s only so little oxygen you can have…and also only so much!)

          Edit: extra info: oxygen and nitrogen are narcotic at depth, nitrogen is better understood and so often we talk about nitrogen narcosis, which tends to start hitting people after about 30m, but each person reacts different and to different degrees at different deaths. I personally notice it at about 50m or so. If I was more relaxed while diving it’d probably hit me sooner.

  • julysfire@lemmy.world
    1·
    3 months ago

    There will absolutely still be a customer that takes a balloon from behind the sign and asks for it to be filled up in the store.

  • Björn Tantau@swg-empire.de
    0·
    3 months ago

    I really wonder what power plants will do with the helium once they get fusion working. Maybe a balloon business on the side isn’t such a bad idea.

    • saigot@lemmy.ca
      1·
      3 months ago

      In a perfect world stick it in a secondary reactor and make lithium. But that’s obviously even further off than hydrogen fusion.

    • subtext@lemmy.world
      1·
      3 months ago

      I mean too much Helium isn’t a problem. It’s one of the few (only?) elements that will just disappear if you don’t do anything with it.

      It’s light enough that it rises to the very tip top of the earth’s atmosphere and is then stripped away by solar radiation. That’s why is a depleting natural resource, not because it’s burned or used or anything, but because it just escapes.