"Lawn Chair, Two O'Clock, One Mile..."

On Tue, 15 May 2007 19:11:04 +1000, "d&tm" wrote in :

Calculating the lift is really not that difficult. And even if you cant
calculate it , how hard is it so simply measure the lift of a single balloon
on a scale to determine how many balloons are requried to lift the desired
payload. I remember doing this my 10 year old daughter using party balloons
and a kitchen scale. I recall we calculated about 5000 party balloons were
required to lift a small person.

http://www.mythbustersfanclub.com/mb...nt/view/61/27/

Mythbusters miscalculated and didn't explain why their calculations
were off.

They thought 1700 would lift 40 pounds.

It took ~3500 to get the effect they sought.

One guess: they were conservative in filling the balloons
on the day of the test and didn't put as much gas in each
balloon (on average) as they did in the lab. Or there
was some weight in the tethers they used that they didn't
factor into their prediction.

Marty
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