Helium

Miscellaneous and Personal Stuff I Must Share
1

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.”

2

Don’t be silly.

The helium isn’t put in to make you jump higher. It’s in there so they’ll squeek against the gym floor at a higher pitch.

3

One is forced to wonder if the shoe will even have any helium in it when the box is opened. Isn’t that stuff damn near impossible to contain?

4

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.

5

Well if they put hydrogen in them they might explode!! Use a little common sense before you criticize!!

“Vandelay!! Say Vandelay!!”

6

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.