When you pop a ballon, why does the balloon explode?

Answer 1

All the above answers are not correct. When you pop a balloon, the intial prick is rapidly expand into a rip by air pressure. The stretched elastic is capable of ripping and unstretching from around the sphere of slightly-compressed air at a speed greater than sound. So what happens is the balloon reveals a sphere of compressed air. The air expands at the speed of sound. What you hear is a small sonic boom caused by that.

Answer 2

What Makes A Balloon Pop

Answer 3

Its like a pressure bomb.

You jam a pin into the balloon, this pierces the elastic skin, the skin recoils quickly to its unstretched size, the rush of air through the pinhole rips the elastic skin into pieces and the sound of popping results from the ripping and sudden release of pressure.

It happens really quickly though, there isn't much of an explosive force, because pressure differences are relatively low between inside and outside the balloon.

Answer 4

The skin of an inflated balloon is under a lot of "tension"; that means that every little section of the skin is being pulled on all sides by all the little sections next to it. Kind of like if you had two friends on either side of you, each one pulling on one of your arms.

When you poke a hole in the balloon, you're separating one section of balloon skin from its neighboring section. This would be like one of your friends (say on your left) suddenly letting go of your arm. What would happen is that you would suddenly get yanked to the right, because your OTHER friend is still pulling! The same thing happens in the balloon. When the tension on one side suddenly disappears (because of the pinhole), the tension on the other side suddenly pulls the skin away from the hole.

Of course, that just makes the hole bigger, and tears the balloon even more. In the blink of an eye, the balloon is completely torn apart.

The noise is caused by the rubber skin suddenly snapping back to its unstretched condition, and by the escaping compressed air making a small shock wave.

Answer 5

It is called pressure. Before the balloon is popped the pressure is equal. The integrity of the walls of the balloon is compromised when it is popped and all the the air is forced out.

Answer 6

okay lets do an experiment.
things you need 2 baloons, a needle, some tape.

blow the baloons, to approximately equal sizes.
now put some tape on on of the baloons.
now da fun part starts. prick thw ballon without the tape. boom its explaodes. Prick da baloon with the tape at the region where da tape is. the ballon will??? It wont explode. This is because when you blow the baloon, the rubber is stretched alot from its normal.
When you prick the baloon it tears because rhe air inside wants to escape fast and the rubber is streched causing it to tear easily. So you hear an explosion. Comapre this with the case of the baloon with the tape stuck on it. The tape holds the baloon together causing air to only escape thru the hole. So eureka its expalained.

Answer 7

the air is going out of the ballon at such a fast pace that it makes that sound and peices go all over the place because of the air pressure inside of the balloon before it was popped

Answer 8

The air inside the balloon is under pressure, pushing on all sides of the balloon. When you create a tiny hole in the balloon, all the air rushes out through that hole, causing it to get much bigger very fast, and we register that as an explosion.

Answer 9

Because the air pressure inside the balloon is greater than atmospheric pressure.

Answer 10

air rushes out from the only opening once the balloon is punctured. gases expand to fill whatever space they are in and so with an opening there is now more space to occupy and air rushes out rapidly ripping the balloon