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A friend of mine was talking about trying to fill largish PVC pipes with helium and using them as ballons. At the time I dismissed the idea out of hand as idiotic, but now I'm not entirely sure, and I'd like your thoughts on the matter.
As I see it, there is nothing -particularly- wrong with PVC pipe; it's just heavy. If memory serves correctly the total lift generated by a balloon is related to the mass of air it displaces. But I dont have any figures for that, or how you'd handle helium (mass of air - mass of helium gas? How does the volume of the gases come into it?).
If you had say, 200mm PVC piping, capped at both ends, and maybe 5 metres long, what would happen?
Is there actually any chance of generating lift with it?
(I believe you'd go something like, convert the volume of He to STP, get mass, convert equiv' mass of air to STP, get that mass, subtract one from the other, subtract weight of pipes to get total lift; in which case I get something on the order of 170g - wieght of pipes (another factor I dont know) of lift, in which case it, as I said, not likely to work)
Anyway, Just curious. Thanks!
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