Can balloons crush you?

[dayofedefeat23]

Hello, recently I was at a party and thier were balloons that were blown up with regular air, not helium, when playing with one I raised the question to my friend that "If there were billions of balloons(with regular air in them) and all these balloons were on top of a person, is it possiable to be crushed to death, I think yes with enough amount of balloons but my friend things not, I know a person would maybe be suffocated but im looking for weather or not a person would be crushed. The answer seems os obviously yes cause a balloon weights something can someone answer this question please with a more detail explination as to why a person would be crushed. Thanks

[swansont]

Yes, it's possible. In addition to the balloon itself, the air inside is at a pressure greater than atmosphere, meaning the balloon has a net weight after accounting for buoyancy. This is why a balloon falls to the floor when you release it. But it would take a lot of balloons.

[big314mp]

I'd say they wouldn't be crushed, because the balloons on the bottom will pop well before the person was harmed in any significant way.

[YT2095]

I don`t think it would be a 100% kill rate, but it wouldn`t do you much good.

there is a way to test this, draw a chalk outline of your friend on the floor, then blow up enough balloons to fill the outline (I estimate between 15 and 20 should do it), then carefully place a sheet of thick plywood over the balloons, then see how much weight you can pile on the wood before the balloons pop.

I reckon it`ll be quite a large amount if done correctly, but not enough to ensure a kill.

[insane_alien]

but the latex would remain, and the latex has weight. ergo, enough balloons and they'll crush you, just like a solid 1 ton block of latex.

[YT2095]

there`s no doubt a ton of solid latex would kill, but that wasn`t asked, the fact is the balloons would pop as the pressure would get increasingly higher the further down the stack you go until a critical Balloon-Popping pressure is reached, thus voiding the scenario.

[Zolar V]

hmm. i would have to agree with YT2095.the lower balloons on the column would pop, and eventually kill the person underneath through the weight of the torn latex, rather than the combined weight of the balloons.

[insane_alien]

how about if you didn't fully inflate the balloons, this would allow them to take more excess pressure before popping. the extreme case would be tossing in fully deflated balloons till person has been pancakeimyfied.

[iNow]

This reminds me of the question, "Would you rather be crushed by a ton of feathers or by a ton of bricks?"

 

The answer, of course, is that it doesn't matter. They both weigh a ton. The balloons have mass, whether full of air or not. Ergo, enough of them very much could crush a person. It would just take an almost unfathomable amount to do so.

[John Cuthber]

Why would the balloons at the bottom pop? Surely they would just get squashed.

[npts2020]

If the balloons are merely external pressure you will get squashed. If the balloons are microscopic in size (like air molecules) and exert pressure in all directions the question is not as clear cut. Submariners, divers and others often are subjected to many times normal atmospheric pressure with little negative effect, they don't get squashed anyway. How high could you stack ballons before gravitational effects were negligible? Can someone survive those pressures? Seems to me the only way you could be squashed is if you could somehow stack enough balloons on top of someone so as to only exert pressure on them and not the air they are breathing and even in that case I would have to see some proof that the force exerted would be enough to do any more than make the unfortunate subject unable to breathe.

[DrP]

My thoughts and speculations:

 

Say we did this experiment inside a huge cylinder - say 5 to 10 meters across and very high. I stand in the middle at the bottom of the cylinder and the balloons start to rain in from the top of the cylinder. As they stack arround me and over me and start to build up and fill the cylinder, not all of there mass will be causing a pressure straight down on me. Depending on the way thay stack - the forces will be distributed and dispersed around me as the balloons stack and form a structure in themselves. Some of the weight will be directed into the walls of the cylinder..... I don't think I am explaining this very well - but imagine an avalanche..... You can be trapped under alot of snow without being crushed as the the snow makes a structure of compact composite out of itself and shields you from more weight. I reckon this would happen with the balloons too. (?)

[dayofedefeat23]

LOLOL These are very good answers but for those talking about balloons poping and such, i know its not probable, I was asking the question as in theory, in thoery is it possiable, i think it is since balloons with air in them weight something. Talking about the fact that the balloons on the bottom would pop proves that a person can be crushed, but just imagine the balloons cannot pop, if that is so then the balloons would eventually crush a person.

[Phi for All]

On reading the OP, I also assumed that the balloons wouldn't be popping (as a given) and that all balloons would be contained somehow directly above the person being crushed. In this scenario, if a balloon weighs an ounce and a human skull crushes around 750-800 psi, it would take... someone else to figure out how many balloons it would take to reach that kind of pressure.

[big314mp]

Metric, Phi, Metric!!

 

This is the best I could find on skull crushing:

 

http://answers.google.com/answers/threadview?id=23646

 

In any case, how the pressure is applied is more important than how much pressure is applied.

[DrP]

On reading the OP, I also assumed that the balloons wouldn't be popping (as a given) and that all balloons would be contained somehow directly above the person being crushed. In this scenario, if a balloon weighs an ounce and a human skull crushes around 750-800 psi, it would take... someone else to figure out how many balloons it would take to reach that kind of pressure.

 

Well that's kinda my point (which I didn't explain to well in post #12) - I reckon that if you worked out how many balloons would give this pressure then you would need more than calculated due to the packing of the balloons as they stack. (If some jam against the edges of the cylinder and make an arch or bidge like structure - protecting those below from new pressures being added from above - these structure could repeat several times as the volume of balloons grows, starting teh stack anew each time) Just a thought - this could be rubbish. Does anyone know what I am talking about here or am I barking up the wrong tree - i.e. would this happen at all?

[npts2020]

DrP: It makes perfect sense, it seems to me that balloons would squeeze the air out from in between and be the same as a compartmentalized solid structure. The only way I could see anyone being crushed is if the cylinder allowed air to be squeezed out (like a cage or net), then it all comes down to how heavy the balloon is and whether you can stack enough before piling more on has negligible effect.

[Zolar V]

hmm, heres and idea

lets just try it

experiment: get a scale for weight, a cardboard box, and some balloons

cut the cardboard box so it is a rectangular box shape with an open top and an closed bottom

weigh the box

now keeping the box on the scale fill several balloons with air and toss them into the box that is on the scale

take a reading of of the scale, then calculate how much weight your balloons produced

 

then calculate the projected weight of lets say 10,000 balloons filled with air

research the approximate weight that will crack the ribs of a average man

and check your 10,000 balloons weight value with this value

 

this ofcourse discludes the effects of squeezing balloons, balloons breaking, air pressure inside the balloons.. and so forth this would be an (ideal) experiment

[John Cuthber]

Imagine you are at the foot of a very high column of balloons. Apart from you, there is nothing to hold them up. If they are heavy enough they will squash you.

[npts2020]

Imagine you are at the foot of a very high column of balloons. Apart from you, there is nothing to hold them up. If they are heavy enough they will squash you.

 

That is the real question. Would they be heavy enough before you ran out of gravity to affect them, it all depends on the weight and size of the balloons. If they weigh 1 gram each (most cheap ones weigh less) and you blow them up to 10 cm diameter at a height of 1,000 km, that is still only 100 kg of weight pushing down (ignoring other effects) over the surface area of 1 balloon. Seems to me you would likely initially survive being crushed in a balloon avalanche on earth no matter how many there were.

[CaptainPanic]

We know that a helium filled party balloon rises, so it is lighter than air. This enables us to estimate the weight of the balloon itself: it cannot be heavier than the air it displaces. If the balloon (the plastic) is heavier than the weight of the volume of air, then filling it with helium would not cause it to go up.

 

Let's assume a worst case scenario where the balloon is exactly as heavy as the air it contains: this effectively means that a massive stack of balloons weights at most twice that of normal air. So, that would be the equivalent of 2 bars of pressure (or 2E5 Pa, or 2E4 kg/m2)!

You must make sure that the balloons exert a similar pressure all over your body (on all sides: top, bottom, front, back, sides). If it is distributed perfectly, you can withstand massive pressures!

 

We know that a person can survive 2 bars of pressure: if you swim at 10 meters depth (using diving equipment) you can have a really nice time to check out all the fish that live there. No harm will come to you if you avoid the sharks.

 

My conclusion: if you were to fill up the atmosphere with balloons, we would not die from the weight itself... although I am certain that the fact that you suddenly have to breathe 50% latex cannot be healthy.

[John Cuthber]

If you took a balloon diving with you it would get squashed. It would occupy less space so you would get more baloons to the kilometer. Also the air in it would be compressed so that too would be denser.

What I'm really not certain about is the effect of lower atmospheric pressure on the balloons a long way up. An inflated balloon at the top of Everest has less (mass of) air in it.

I think the overall effect is that only the weight of the rubber counts because the air in the balloon is bouyed up by the air outside it. If I weigh a balloon, then blow it up and reweigh it the weight is very nearly the same.

 

This is a more interesting question that it first looks.

[Mr Skeptic]

A fun question. The balloons have weight, and in addition have extra weight from the compressed air inside them. As to whether they would pop, I don't think they would pop unless they were overinflated -- applying more pressure to the balloon will change its size. So long as their shape can change to leave very little empty space, they will just be compressed.

 

However, you are not so flexible. If you were laying down on the floor, you would have pressure at all your sides, though not very evenly. However, unless you are given compressed air to breathe (which IMO would be cheating), you would first suffocate from lack of air, then suffocate because you can't breathe against the pressure on your chest, then eventually your ribs would break.

[big314mp]

So, if we take the limit, as balloon size goes to zero...we get some sort of model that has little relevance.

 

In any case, if the guy under the balloons is provided with a compressed air source to breath, it would be much harder to crush him, given that his lungs would be near the ambient pressure.

 

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Barotrauma

[npts2020]

Well I am willing to state here and now that nobody can crush me with typical air filled ballons no matter what they do (suffocation doesnt count) and volunteer as a test subject to try it. I get to watch you blow up all of those ballons tho.