Magnificent man
Question: I read in the newspapers the story of a Californian man who
attached a number of weather balloons to his lawn chair and didn’t come down for
some time. How much helium or hydrogen would you need to lift an average adult
off the ground? And how big a balloon would you need to reduce your apparent
weight to one-sixth, as though you were walking on the Moon?
Answer: The amount of buoyancy (uplift) depends on the difference in density
between air and the lightweight gas.
If we assume air weighs in at 1.293 kilograms per cubic…
