Some shoe company (I’ve already forgotten which), is now marketing on television a basketball shoe which contains – get this – helium.
Why not tie a freakin’ balloon to your waistband and see if that makes you jump higher?? Good sweet heavens, I used to tie Star Wars figures to balloons and watch the balloon plummet to the earth in .0005 seconds. A matchbox sized gap full of helium in a show is supposed to make you jump higher?
Christ almighty…
“I guess it is possible for one person to make a difference, although most of the time they probably shouldn’t.”
Helium does diffuse out of porous materials very rapidly. Depending on how thick the walls of the helium compartment are and what they’re made of/lined with, the helium could very well be largely gone by the time someone actually puts the shoe on for the first time.
IIRC back in the '84 olympics they were trying all kinds of weight shaving techniques on track bicycles including pumping tires with helium. Less rotating mass on wheels does make a big difference, even a few ounces is very noticable, but I think the helium was such a small difference it never made a measureable performance gain.