Well there is a reason we talked helium and not hydrogen. Flaming balloons at a party would not be good. Speaking for myself I don't mind inhaling a bit of helium to talk funny but I want no part of turning into a fire breathing dragon.
You have a strange definition of "good" and "party". Really, what's a party if there's not some form of fire or flammable object? :flame::target:
Instead of filling the car with helium, you could fill it with helium filled party ballons. You won't then need a scuba tank (extra weight). With all this extra lift, the tyres are going to have a job getting a grip.
I love this forum, when there seems to be an unsolvable problem, someone comes a long with a simple elegant solution.
This actually makes much more sense - and the foil balloons are light, and keep the gas longer. Big problem with rear visibility - still kinda dangerous! To the person thinking creating a vacuum inside the car - there are just way too many places for air to come back in (vents, doors, firewall etc). Even if you plugged up most of the 'holes', and got a crazy good pump, you are stuck back with the whole danger - I would not place my life on the line (scuba tank going empty/faulty).
WHAT rear visability??? (Good thing I have a lot of stick time in HMMWV's...side view mirrors are your best friend!!)
That's because you tried to pull a vacuum on the tires. Classic newbie mistake. You need to PUSH a vacuum into the tires. sheesh.....
All the really cool kids in Japan are buying whitewalls and filling the tires with tritium so they give off an eerie radioactive-like glow.
Tritium may seem cool - but will weigh the tires down - affecting mileage. In addition, it's expensive. To my knowledge, there are no tires with "clear" white walls (allowing for the light to come out). In addition, even Tritium needs a light source to start its reaction. This is well documented in "lighting the stick (or some form of that search)" where many looked at lighting the shift knob. It is a confined space - and hence, you could throw some Helium that way - but it is too small to really mean anything - and it would still leak a bit - causing re-filling. We are currently working on the foil balloon experiment - just waiting on lab time.... I think this is really the best solution (or maybe a large foil bladder in the rear compartment).... The cost isn't cheap - stay tuned...
Tritium is light enough. It is Hydrogen with an atomic weight of 3 and is diatomic so molecular mass is 6, Helium is 4 so not such a big difference compared to air at 29. A savings of 23 vs 25. You don't need to do anything to start the Tritium reaction (decay), you can't stop it. It is a weak beta emitter with a 1/2 life of 12 years and even if you excite it by whispering "I love You" in it's ear, it won't decay any faster. A problem is that the beta particles will only penetrate a few molecules of tire material, so you need transparent sidewalls lined with a phosphor that will glow when the beta particles strike it.:cheer2:
"This actually makes much more sense - and the foil balloons are light, and keep the gas longer. Big problem with rear visibility - still kinda dangerous!" No problem, I have a back up camera
As long as you use transparent balloons you will be able to see through them in the daytime, at night the glow will interfere with your vision, so keep your backup camera.
Re: What about the overal environmental impact? Alas, you misunderstand, I enjoy not having to check the air pressure in the summer tyres filled with helium, two years now, pumped them to 40psi so switching tyres around is easy, but the winter tyres which are losing one or two pounds of air pressure a month are in constant need of air. As you can see I rather enjoy suffering fools now and then.
Well, if you really want lightness, there is always positronium with a molecular mass of 0.0022. Of course, you'd have to solve that pesky annihilation problem.
Re: What about the overal environmental impact? Enjoyment aside, you can't check air pressure of helium, because there is no air in it. Duh, no wonder its stays constant forever. Maybe it works the same with nitrogen-filled tires, if you purge air with N2 completely, the "air" pressure stays constant (at zero), despite N2 leaking.
We are trying to keep this a bit more topic centric. If you have a real world place to get either para or ortho positronium - great. How will you utilize it - NOT! We are scheduling lab time for the "foil" helium balloons to verify their affect on mileage. I'm guessing they should help. It should be a day or two before it can even be approved (on the sly)...
