2007-07-20 19:04:12 · 5 answers · asked by Santha Kumari P 1 in Science & Mathematics ➔ Physics
What's the difference between an inflated balloon and a deflated one?
The air inside the balloon.
Believe it or not, the air does have mass (because it is made up of nitrogen, oxygen, and argon atoms), so when you remove the air, the mass decreases.
Many students make the mistake of thinking gases do not have any mass. This is imposssible because gases are made of atoms, and all matter has mass and takes us space (has volume).
A more accurate statement is that gases have little mass compared to the space they take up(volume). Or in other words, gases have vey low densities.
2007-07-20 19:27:14 · answer #1 · answered by Noles H 2 · 0⤊ 0⤋
There are two points that you seem to be raising:
a) Why does a balloon weigh less when deflated?
Many people have answered that: because it has less gas in it. When you weigh the balloon properly, you would put it in a vacuum chamber to eliminate the buoyancy effect, and sure enough, the more gas it has within it, the more it will weigh.
b) (implicitly) Why does a balloon rise when it is inflated, not deflated?
Here the point is that even though a filled balloon has more mass within it, if it is filled with a light gas like helium or hydrogen, the amount of volume it takes up displaces a much greater mass of normal air. So the buoyancy of the air (the difference between the weight of the displaced air and the actual gas) pushes the balloon up.
So the point is that when gas leaks out of the balloon, it loses gravitational pull from lost mass, but it also loses "buoyancy push" from lost volume. That turns out to be much more important!
2007-07-21 08:55:40 · answer #2 · answered by ? 6 · 0⤊ 0⤋
When a balloon is inflated it contains compressed air. So its mass will be the total mass of the balloon and that of the air. This can be felt only if the balloon is weighed in vacuum. When the balloon is deflated its mass = ( the total mass - the mass of theair deflated.)
2007-07-21 02:15:20 · answer #3 · answered by Joymash 6 · 0⤊ 0⤋
When a balloon is deflated, its contributing mass is simply the mass of the plastic of the balloon itself. When you blow up a balloon, the air inside it is higher than the outside pressure, causing it to contribute to the mass of the balloon.
2007-07-21 02:11:02 · answer #4 · answered by MooseBoys 6 · 0⤊ 0⤋
Because it no longer has the gas inside and that much weight will be less.
2007-07-21 02:11:23 · answer #5 · answered by Swamy 7 · 0⤊ 0⤋