Asklemmy

I think this gets a bit more complicated. A balloon pops due to the rubber reaching its elastic limit as the internal pressure pushes outward against a lower pressure environment

But in a confined space like a silo, the internal pressures will all be pushing into, and pushed by, eachother. Each balloon only has so much room to expand into, if theyre fairly elastic balloons they can fill that space without surpassing the rubbers elastic limit. It would be a pretty good example of voronoi noise actually.

So, instead of imagining the weight one balloon can support before popping, imagine how much weight a thin section of balloon rubber can handle before rupturing, like under a hydraulic press.

Given: a balloon will pop when pressed with enough weight Given: a balloon filled with air has a positive weight

Stack enough balloons on top of a balloon, it’ll pop.

Though…. Given the added complexity of our atmosphere not being homogenous, you might have balloons popping from expansion from going too high before you get them being crushed below.

This is a question for Randall Munroe. I wish I knew how to summon him.

Is this question assuming air pressure and gravity loss at higher altitudes, or is it assuming that the full structure would have a consistent air pressure and gravity? If so, would it be from sea level?

A standard party balloon is around 3 grams if I had to guesstimate, so you could probably figure out how much weight it would take to burst a single balloon, and divide that by 3 grams to get the number of balloons. The main problem with that is the varying amounts that buoyancy and gravity would provide the upward or downward forces.

What's the weight of one balloon?

What's the amount of force/pressure needed to pop a balloon?

I don't see them popping beyond the potential friction of rubber on rubber.

The main issue seems to be you have a compressible fluid undergoing compression due to the weight of the rubber in the balloons. As you went down, the balloons would likely look less deflated until they looked not inflated at all. At that point, you might start to get the rubber from the balloons bonding together. As the mass shrinks, you are probably going to get a friction force of the rubber against the silo wall causing shear within the system. This is what will likely cause individual balloons to pop, but at this point the whole mass will be pushed together to a point to not let air escape.

I miss mythbusters

Damn that's a good question.

Depends on the stretchiness of the material. Even without a confined space, but in a theoretical magically fixed balloon tower, I'm going to say that they'd bounce forever. The reasoning being that at some point the bottom balloon would be fully stretched but since it can push against the second balloon, which is not yet fully stretched, it can make that stretch, so it wouldn't necessarily burst. Continuing this feedback effect upwards it would mean the average balloon only needs to hold its own weight.

Yes.