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"A dream. It's perfect": Helium discovery in northern Minnesota may be biggest ever in North America (www.cbsnews.com)

submitted 5 months ago by [email protected] to c/[email protected]

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"A dream. It's perfect": Helium discovery in northern Minnesota may be biggest ever in North America::For a century, the U.S. Government-owned the largest helium reserve in the country, but the biggest exporters now are in Russia, Qatar and Tanzania. With this new discovery, Minnesota could be joining that list.

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[–] [email protected] 28 points 5 months ago* (last edited 5 months ago) (2 children)

Balloon helium is 3% helium. So every 33 balloons is one Balloon worth of pure helium. No helium starts off pure. It all gets concentrated/separated to get that way. "Balloon grade" helium can be concentrated just fine and considering that thousands of those balloons are filled every day, it is a lot of wasted helium.

*I had my percentage swapped, it seems. Balloon helium is 97% helium.

[–] [email protected] 14 points 5 months ago* (last edited 5 months ago) (1 children)

balloon helium has some air in it, it's still 90%+ helium, probably

[–] [email protected] 8 points 5 months ago (1 children)

Oh. I had that totally bass akward.

[–] [email protected] 4 points 5 months ago (1 children)

depends on manufacturer, some state it's just 50%

[–] [email protected] 3 points 5 months ago (3 children)

One of the things I read said it has to be at least 93% to make balloons float.

[–] [email protected] 9 points 5 months ago

i've took time to actually look up various manufacturers' datasheets and it's: range 50-99%, 95%, 97%, range 95-100%, 99%, unspecified or just data for pure helium. at this point i'm pretty sure there's no such thing as "balloon gas manufacturer", everyone buys 4N+ cryogenic helium and balloon gas consists of odds and ends that come from flushing piping and empty bottles with better stuff

[–] [email protected] 3 points 5 months ago (1 children)

how much do you need to float, if it's helium then 1L lifts about 1g of mass, if it's 50% helium 50% air it lifts 0.5g per liter, then it depends on how heavy balloon is in relation to its volume

[–] [email protected] 1 points 5 months ago* (last edited 5 months ago)

The balloon + helium has to be lighter than the (couple of liters of) air it displaces.

He Density (at STP) 0.1786 g/L

The density of air at sea level is about 1.2 g/L

Another interesting factoid about rare elements: Very little nickel is found in the Earth's crust. Most nickel has arrived on Earth from meteors. Usually mixed with iron, which held-back the arrival of the iron-age.

[–] [email protected] 12 points 5 months ago (1 children)

Last time I bought what I thought was a pure balloon of He, I’m pretty sure it had gotten cut with fentanyl.

[–] [email protected] 8 points 5 months ago

How high did it get? Asking for errr... science...