Can Helium be packed into a Buckminster Fullerene ball, to produce a rising object?

Question

I'm guessing that there needs to be something inside to stop the bucky ball from collapsing

Wally h, the buckyball object wouldn't be an 'antigravity machine', it would just be a solid structure that is able to float

I understand what I am saying completely. Some of you are commenting on bouyancy thinking that I'm only putting the Helium in the buckball to make it rise. This is not what I am suggesting; the Helium is just to stabalise the pressure difference, because I would think that an extremely large buckyball (which is what i have in mind) would collapese and break if there was a total vacuum inside of it.

Answer 1

maybe you are confused a bit. the effect of gravity on the helium molecule(atom) is the same as on iron or osmium or lead. it is the force of buoyancy that makes helium rise in the atmosphere. if helium and oxygen are mixed together in a vessel, then the helium will rise and oxygen will come down due to the force of buoyancy being greater on helium than its own weight. it can be understood like this. helium gas is less dense than oxygen. therefore, by helium going up and oxygen coming down, the centre of gravity of the system comes down and that is what gravity does. if there is no other gas around, helium will come down, not go up. you can try this experiment. fill a balloon with helium and let it fall in a vacuumated container. to your surprise, the balloon will fall down as fast as an iron ball will. the bonds between carbons in a fullerene molecule are perhaps way too large for a helium atom to be successfully trapped, but even if you find a way to do it, there will be no buoyant force of the fullerene-helium system and so the molecule will not go down or up any different from before.
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what are you talking about? pressure is something that is appreciable on a very large scale as compared to the molecular level. at about the size of a vessel. have you ever heard of organic molecules collapsing due to the pressure outside. truly lot of pressure is required to do that. and well, the buckminster fullerene is a highly stable structure of carbon atoms.

Answer 2

The spacing between nuclei in a fullerene is about 0.7nm. Though the helium molecule is smaller, it still has been trapped inside a fullerene. It probably wouldn't take much pressure to keep the fullerene from collapsing. A C60 molecule has an atomic weight of 720. A representative air molecule, 29, and a helium molecule, 8. Calculate the number of gas molecules that would fit inside C60 at atmospheric pressure. I doubt it's enough to overcome the C60 mass. You could calculate how large a fullerene you would need for buoyancy in air. In principle it could be done, but I doubt we have the technology.

Answer 3

Helium is inert, it does not react with carbon.
Another of Buckminster Fuller's inventions was the geodesic dome. His calculations indicated that a dome 1/2 mile across would float like a hot air balloon due to solar heating.

Answer 4

Doing this would effectively create a helium complex, so what you are doing is increasing the molecular weight of the buckminster fullerene. Lots of compounds contain hydrogen as part of their structure, put that doesn't make them "lighter than air." Macroscopic qualities often tend to break down at microscopic levels.

Answer 5

Interesting concept. Maybe something would be needed on the outside to hold the insides inside too. Like a reverse magnetic field or some such. One on the inside to hold the helium in and one on the outside to keep it there? Just pondering. You may be onto something with that question though. Who knows maybe you will invent anti-gravity that actually works?

Answer 6

Good thinking but no. Helium in a balloon makes it rise because it is replacing denser air. This this case the helium is denser because if it replacing nothing.

Answer 7

packing helium would increase it's density therefore the pressure would be greater so no it would not rise check out Bernoulli's principle

Answer 8

why not??
just give the ball a 'skin' that doesn't let the gas out.
eg an aluminium/ titanium foil / a polymer foil.

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Answer 9

Interesting, but the answer is no.