Hellium balloons: facts from physics

Helium balloons are a great decoration for any celebration. You can buy them or have them delivered to your home. Residents of isolated regions, where there is no such service, can also decorate the celebration with these inflatable flying balloons, filling them with special gas from a cylinder themselves.

But are these colorful balloons aspiring to fly upwards so safe? What are the properties of helium? And can innocent fun turn into serious problems?

What is helium gas?

Helium gas is a chemical element numbered 2 in the well-known Mendeleev table and is a simple monatomic substance that has neither color, nor taste, nor smell. Helium is an inert gas. It leads the group of substances with similar properties.

Helium is the second lightest gas. In first place is hydrogen. That is why balloons filled with helium constantly try to fly upwards. After all, the gas that fills them is much lighter than air.

On the scale of the universe, helium is very common. It takes up about 23% of outer space. It's also found in the Earth's crust. Large reserves of this chemical element were found in Russia in the East Siberian gas fields.

But there is no pure helium on the surface of the Earth. And this is understandable. After all, it is very light, so it immediately rises up. It is produced artificially from natural gas by deep refrigeration. This is made possible thanks to its property of liquefying, which is more difficult than that of all other volatile substances. The production cost in Russia is high. So, the high cost of helium balloons and helium tanks is nothing to wonder about.

Reference: køb helium

Physical properties of helium

The physical properties of this chemical element are surprising. Helium has a very low boiling and melting point. Its boiling point is at minus 268.9˚C. That is why it is always volatile. It can only become liquid at extremely low temperatures.

Helium has a high heat capacity and good thermal conductivity. It is a dielectric, which means that it does not change its properties when subjected to an electric discharge.

Because of its special physical properties, this element is used in many areas:

• in metallurgy;
• welding production;
• rock analysis;
• for launching meteorological probes;
• filling breathing mixtures in scuba divers and divers' tanks.

These are all very serious areas of human activity. But, there is one that is not serious. Helium balloons are used to decorate for holidays and celebrations.