Balloons

A balloon is a flexible bag normally filled with a gas, such as helium, hydrogen, nitrous oxide or air. Early balloons were made of dried animal bladders. Modern balloons can be made from materials such as rubber, latex, chloroprene or a nylon fabric. more...

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Some balloons are purely decorative, while others are used for specific purposes such as meteorology, medical treatment, military defense, or transportation. A balloon's properties, including its low density and relatively low cost, have lead to a wide range of applications.

Etymology

The word balloon was originally derived from the French word ballon, meaning large ball. This was in turn probably from the latin ballone, but another possible source for it was balla, meaning ball, from Old High German. Other related words include the Middle English bal, which was probably from the Old English beall, both meaning ball.

History

The rubber balloon was invented by Michael Faraday in 1824; it was inflated with hydrogen and used in his experiments with that element.. The more familiar latex balloons of today were first manufactured in London, 1847, by J.G. Ingram, but mass production did not occur until the 1930s.

Applications

Decoration or entertainment

Party balloons are mostly made of natural latex tapped from rubber trees and can be filled with air, helium, water, or any other suitable liquid or gas. The rubber's elasticity makes the volume adjustable. Most of this rubber is made from recycled material, such as old tires and tennis shoes.

Filling the balloon with air is done with the mouth, with a manual or electric inflator (such as a hand pump), or with a source of compressed air.

When rubber balloons are filled with helium so that they float, they typically retain their buoyancy for only a day or so. The enclosed helium atoms escape through small pores in the latex which are larger than the helium atoms. Balloons filled with air usually hold their size and shape much longer.

Even a perfect rubber balloon eventually loses the gas to the outside. The process by which a substance or solute migrates from a region of high concentration, through a barrier or membrane, to a region of lower concentration is called diffusion. The inside of balloons can be treated with a special gel (for instance, the polymer solution sold under the "Hi Float" brand) which coats the inside of the balloon to reduce the helium leakage, thus increasing float time to a week or longer.

Read more at Wikipedia.org