Balloons & Buoyancy

We all like balloons, especially when they’re floating and not being held by creepy clowns. But what exactly makes them float? Well, Balloons & Buoyancy is an educational application that you can use to learn how balloons and gasses interact.

In simple terms, buoyancy is an upward force that a fluid or gas can exert on an immersed object with a lesser weight. This is how a lot of objects can float in the ocean and this also how balloons (which you could say are “immersed” in air) get to go up, up and away.

In Balloons & Buoyancy, you experiment with various types of balloons and how gases and temperature can influence the object’s flight or fall. From the main interface you can access four tabs, each with a container where you can pump light or heavy gas.

In the first tab, you get to play with a hot air balloon and see if you can get it to lift against both light and heavy gases. You can also adjust the heat inside the container, thus agitating the gas molecules and creating more obstacles for our little balloon.

In the second tab, you can do the same thing, but with a rigid hollow sphere. You can see how the object behaves depending on both the gas inside it and the gas in the container. The third tab allows you to experiment with a helium balloon, which also changes in size according to how much gas you put into it.

In the fourth tab, you don’t have any balloons, but you get to explore the properties of gases and see how they react inside the container, while adjusting the temperature. Remember that you also have various tools for measuring any experiment’s results; this makes Balloons & Buoyancy not only a fun animated program, but also a very useful learning tool.