This stupid question has been on my mind for a week, and it’s stupid, BUT IM GONNA ASK IT ANYWAY!
How many average-sized, helium balloons would it take to lift a 160 pound person?
I guess that’s it. Then I thought about it being cool to float way up and then let go and parachute down, but that’s a different story.
I don’t know the answer, but there was a guy back in the '80s who used 42 weather ballons attached to a lawn chair to go aloft over L.A. (He was fined. A couple of years later he went up to the local mountains and shot himself.)
I recently saw something about this. Apparently it’s becoming a popular sport for some people. (The parachute thing has been done, BTW.)
Take a math break and figure it out here.
A helium party balloon has a buoyancy of only a few grams. It would take tens of thousands of them to lift a person.
Approximately 6000.
Very approximately, since I had to guess at balloon weight, string weight, average size, etc.
From this thread, consider lawn chair Larry’s honorable mention at the 1982 Darwin Awards.