Mythbusters: Lead Balloon

The Mythbusters: Lead Balloon episode originally aired on Discovery Channel on January 23rd. The episode featured two myths:
1. a lead balloon can fly
2. you can surf on a wave generated by explosives.

With the lead balloon myth, the tested the statement “going down like a lead balloon”. Basically, the first step was to determine if you could actually make a balloon out of lead. Adam and Jamie first began the testing experiments to see what materials they could make balloons out of. They made balloons out of tinfoil, which is about 6x lighter than lead. It pretty much didn’t work, and in Jamie’s words, “tinfoil is like wet toilet paper”.

With the full-scale balloon tests they made a design that looked like origami that got them to have the balloon inflate into a cube-like shape. As Adam had designed it, the balloon did unfold into the cube shape when inflated. The balloon was about 11kg and the more height it gained the less stable it became. Pretty much the myth was BUSTED!!!

Image Source: Heinrich Van Den Bers