June 5 – Hot Air Balloon Day

Posted June 5, 2013

Today we celebrate a very brave pig, duck and rooster!

The three creatures took the world's very first hot-air balloon ride on this date in 1783. They all did just fine, health-wise, although many thought they would run out of oxygen going so high in the sky!

We probably should also credit the Montgolfier brothers, Joseph and Etienne, since they were the ones who built up to this experiment with smaller balloons, they were the ones who created the huge globe-shaped balloon out of sackcloth and paper, and they were the ones who plunked the farm animals into the hot air balloon's basket!

It is hard to believe that the heavy (500 pounds, or 225 kg) balloon, with its 1,800 buttons and a fish net of cord, actually rose more than 6,000 feet (2,000 m) into the air and stayed aloft for 10 minutes! Nowadays hot-air balloons are made of rip-stop nylon or polyester treated with coatings to withstand ultraviolet light. They are usually made of 1200 to 1500 square yards of fabric, 2,500 feet of tape, and 6-8 miles (miles!) of thread. Modern balloons generally weigh between 200 and 350 pounds—a lot lighter than the Montgolfiers' balloon. But the basket and fuel tanks add another 400 or so pounds, and that first balloon did not have fuel tanks.

(Surprisingly enough, the pig, duck and rooster just stood around and tolerated the flight; they did not steer or reheat the air!)

What makes a hot air ballon rise?

You probably already know that hot air rises. If you have ever been in a two-story house, you've surely noticed that upstairs gets very stuffy on a hot day, Or that cooling the air of the upper story can cause a sort of waterfall of cool air pouring downstairs in the stairwell.

This is because heat causes the various molecules in the air to jiggle much, much faster, and they spread out more. As the air inside the hot air balloon heats up, the balloon seems to inflate as the air inside becomes warmer and warmer and expands more and more. Eventually the balloon becomes so full of low-density air that it rises—carrying up the basket and any passengers.

You know, passengers like a honeymoon couple. Or sightseers and adventure junkies. And your occasional pig!

Check it out...

Here is a YouTube video that shows a sort of homemade hot-air balloon. (Don't try this at home without adult consent!) 

By the way...

It may not have been a pig, a duck, and rooster that took that first flight.

It may have been a sheep, a goat, and a duck...or maybe a sheep, a duck, and a rooster. I cannot seem to find any two websites that agree! But it is always three animals, and they are always barnyard animals.)

Celebrate!

If you cannot spend the time or money on a hot-air balloon flight, check out these ideas for cookies and centerpieces and cupcakes to celebrate the day! 

Also on this date:

Apple II Day 

Constitution Day in Denmark

Birthday of the inventor of the hologram, Dennis Gabor

Plan ahead:

Check out my Pinterest pages on June holidays, historical anniversaries in June, and June birthdays.

September 20, 2012 - Happy Birthday, James Dewar

Have you ever kept icy cold liquids in a thermos? They stay colder a lot longer than they would in an ordinary bottle.

Even better, have you ever kept hot coffee or cocoa piping hot in a thermos?

A thermos of hot cocoa or coffee can be a beautiful thing at a nighttime football game or concert under-the-stars—and we have James Dewar to thank for it!

Dewar (born on this date in 1842) was a Scottish chemist and physicist who studied atomic and molecular spectroscopy and the liquefaction of gases. He needed something to store liquid gases—something that would keep heat out—and the idea occurred to him to build a double bottle—a bottle inside a bottle—with a vacuum between the two. We call this invention a Dewar flask.

A Dewar flask has very reflective surfaces (mirrors) facing each other to prevent heat from being transmitted by radiation. In other words, the inner surface of the outer bottle has a reflective surface, and the outer surface of the inner bottle also has a reflective surface. In between these two reflective surfaces is...nothing at all! A vacuum is a space with almost no atoms at all—no air, nothing. The vacuum prevents heat being transmitted by conduction.

This great idea was exploited for commercial use by the Thermos company. By the way, Dewar didn't get any money from this commercial use of his idea because he failed to file a patent on it.

Learn more about a Dewar flask or Thermos from How Stuff Works. 

Learn more about heat from Science Kids and neoK12. 

Also on this date:

Anniversary of the first patent leather 

Anniversary of the first Otis elevators 

January 14, 2010

It's “Hot Foods Month”!

In the Northern Hemisphere, it tends to be cold in January. For many, this January in particular has been really cold. Perhaps that's why January has been declared:

Hot Tea Month,
Oatmeal Month, and
Soup Month.

Mmm, sounds good, doesn't it? It would be so nice to spend all day inside, cozy and warm, drinking hot tea and eating hot oatmeal and soup.


Try this no-sugar-added recipe for Apple-Snapple Oatmeal. (It's nothing to do with the product “Snapple.”)

Or how about this Amish Baked Oatmeal?


Here is a recipe for Italian Sausage Soup, and here is a vegetarian Black Bean and Salsa Soup.




Keep Warm!

You have probably heard the term “warm-blooded.” Although scientists don't use the term anymore (it is quite vague), most of us “get” that warm-blooded animals are able to keep their own body temperatures relatively steady, no matter what temperature their surroundings are.

Different animals use a variety of ways to regulate their temperatures and withstand the cold. Take this quiz to see how hot your temperature knowledge is.

1.Tortoises are cold-blooded, so they need to be wrapped in a blanket to stay warm at night. True or False?

2.Dinosaurs are reptiles, so they are cold-blooded. True or False?

3.Bears, like other mammals, are warm-blooded. Still, many species hibernate during the coldest part of the year. True or False?

4.In general, warm-blooded animals needs 5 to 10 times as much food as cold-blooded ones of the same size. True or False?

5.Shivering causes an animal to become colder. True or False?

6.Which of the things below help us humans to keep warmer? (There is more than one correct answer.)

A. Dressing in layers
B. Getting out of the wind
C. Drinking hot liquids
D. Keeping the head covered
E. Sweating

ANSWERS and Explanations:

1.false. Blankets and sweaters and other cozy items help keep warm-blooded (endothermic) animals warm in cold air because they insulate the animal from the colder environment in the same way that a thermos bottle helps to keep coffee hot. However, if you put cold or room-temperature coffee into a thermos, it's not going to get hot! In the same way, a cold tortoise isn't going to heat up with a blanket or a sweater. The blanket will soon reach the outside temperature, as will the tortoise. In order to warm up the tortoise, something like a heat lamp is called for.

2.false. All reptiles alive today are cold-blooded (ectothermic), but the dinosaurs did evolve into the warm-blooded birds. So at some point, some of the creatures, at least, did begin to regulate their body heat. Scientists think that different dinosaurs evolved different mechanisms of heat regulation, but most scientists think that most dinosaurs were warm-blooded.

3.true. Most mammals are fully endothermic, including bears, but different mammals have different strategies for surviving cold temperatures. One of those strategies is hibernation, during which the body temperature may drop as much as 50 degrees Fahrenheit!

4.true. There are advantages and disadvantages of being warm-blooded. One of the advantages is that endothermic creatures can remain active no matter what the temperature is, but the cost for our higher metabolism is that we need more food than cold-blooded animals—5 to 10 times the food of a ectothermic animal of the same size.

5.false. Warm-blooded animals (including humans) shiver when they are cold in order to warm themselves. Movement of any kind creates heat, which is why people stamp their feet and rub their hands when they get cold.

6. A, B, and D help keep us warm.
C makes us feel warm, but doesn't necessarily make us warmer.
E cools us off.

Explanation:
A. Layers keep us warm because a small layer of air is trapped between each layer. Like the air between the two sides of a thermos bottle, this air acts as insulation to prevent heat loss.

B. Wind across a surface causes heat loss from that surface, and the faster the wind, the greater the heat loss. If the air is 50 degrees F and there is wind, we FEEL colder than 50 degrees with no wind, and our bodies lose more heat, as well. That's why meteorologists and weather reporters talk about the “wind chill factor.”

C. I read explanations from doctors that claimed two seemingly conflicting things. First, hot drinks can slightly increase our core temperature, thus keep us warm. However, hot drinks make us feel warmer because the hot liquid increases blood flow to the skin--but there, the heat can be lost, which makes us slightly colder.

D. It is a bit of a myth that we lose most of our body heat through our head, according to research, but there can be a significant amount of heat loss from the head when you are at rest, and way more when you are exercising or shivering. So keeping the head covered is an important key to staying warm.

E. Sweat evaporating off the skin is a major way in which many animals, including humans, stays cool.

Here are some cool infrared photos. Notice the difference between the cold-blooded creatures and the warm-blooded humans holding them!