The Hot Air Balloon Book: Build and Launch Kongming Lanterns, Solar Tetroons, and More
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The Hot Air Balloon Book: Build and Launch Kongming Lanterns, Solar Tetroons, and More
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Overview
Product Details
| ISBN-13: | 9781613740996 |
|---|---|
| Publisher: | Chicago Review Press, Incorporated |
| Publication date: | 08/01/2013 |
| Series: | Science in Motion Series |
| Sold by: | Barnes & Noble |
| Format: | eBook |
| Pages: | 240 |
| Lexile: | 1150L (what's this?) |
| File size: | 8 MB |
| Age Range: | 9 - 12 Years |
About the Author
Read an Excerpt
The Hot Air Balloon Book
Build and Launch Kongming Lanterns, Solar Tetroons, and More
By Clive Catterall
Chicago Review Press Incorporated
Copyright © 2013 Clive CatterallAll rights reserved.
ISBN: 978-1-61374-099-6
CHAPTER 1
Balloon History
Where Does the Balloon Come From?
Historians know that the first human-carrying balloon was designed and built by the Montgolfier brothers in France, and it flew for the first time in 1783. But the balloon was not a completely new idea, and it is very hard to find out who first thought of lifting things with a bag full of gas. In fact, there are a surprising number of different countries that claim to be the home of the inventor of the balloon.
China
The Chinese people love paper hot air balloons, and there are probably more paper hot air balloons flown in China than in the rest of the world combined.
The most common balloon used in festivals has a small, tapered envelope that has a square cross-section at the top that tapers to a round cross-section at the bottom. It is usually called a Kongming lantern rather than a balloon, because it has a small wax burner inside that produces a bright, luminous flame that lights up the whole envelope like a Chinese lantern. The balloon was given the name Kongming after the man who is said to have invented it.
Zhuge Liang, also known as Kongming, was an advisor, military strategist, and chancellor for the Shu Han region during the Three Kingdoms period of Chinese history. He was famous for his wisdom, intelligence, and cunning. He was so clever that he could always invent new and surprising ways of beating his enemies — even when the situation looked impossible. One of the stories about Zhuge Liang tells how he invented the hot air balloon.
Zhuge Liang and his troops were occupying the town of Pingyang when his enemy Sima Yi surrounded it and began a siege, hoping to force the famous Zhuge Liang to surrender. Sima Yi's troops had occupied the land all around the town and watched carefully for messengers leaving the town, so there was no way for Zhuge Liang to send a signal to his allies for help.
Zhuge Liang noticed that the wind was blowing toward his allies, so he asked for a special large lantern to be made with no hole in the top and a wax burner held in the bottom. He painted a message onto the side of the lantern and carried it up to a tower on the town wall. He lit the burner and released the lantern, which floated away in the wind toward his allies. Sima Yi's troops below could only watch as the lantern passed overhead, carrying a message that asked for help. Sure enough, Zhuge Liang's allies saw the message, rode to Pingyang, and rescued Zhuge Liang and his troops.
Apart from this legend, there is no historical evidence that Zhuge Liang invented the hot air balloon. One writer suggested that the Kongming lantern might have been invented by a Chinese lantern-maker and then named after the famously clever Zhuge Liang, perhaps because it looks a lot like the little square hat Zhuge Liang always used to wear. Sadly, even this explanation is unlikely as there are no written descriptions of paper hot air balloons in China before 1783.
Italy
Francesco Lana was born in 1631 in Brescia, Lombardy, an area in the north of modern Italy. He became a Jesuit priest and, like many Jesuits, was encouraged to study so that he could become a teacher. Eventually he became a professor of mathematics and physics at Brescia, and while he was teaching there he learned about Otto Von Guericke's experiments at Regensburg and Magdeburg in 1654.
Von Guericke had shown that two copper hemispheres 20 inches (50 cm) in diameter could be held together by pumping out the air from the space between them. The atmospheric pressure outside the hemispheres was so great that once all the air had been pumped out, two teams of eight horses could not pull them apart.
Lana was fascinated by the experiment, but he was particularly interested in the new and more efficient vacuum pump Von Guericke had invented. Lana calculated the weight that must have been lost from the pair of copper hemispheres when the air was pumped out. If a sphere could be made from thin enough material, then the weight of the air removed from inside the sphere by this new pump might actually be greater than the weight of the sphere itself. This should make the sphere float in the air!
In 1663 Lana designed a lighter-than-air ship, the details of which he later published in 1670 in his book Prodomo. This design used four large floating copper spheres from which a boat is suspended. The boat had a sail and hull, as Lana intended it to be propelled by the wind and steered much as a boat on the sea.
Lana never tried to build his airboat, and of course there would have been practical problems if he had. To make the airboat fly, I estimate that the copper skin of the big spheres would have to be less than 0.004 inches (0.1 mm) thick. This is about the thickness of a human hair and only about four times the thickness of household aluminum foil. At this thickness, the sphere would collapse under its own weight even before you tried to pump out any air.
Portugal and Brazil
Bartholomeu Lourenço de Gusmão was born in Sao Paolo, Brazil, in 1685. At that time Brazil was a part of the Portuguese empire, so when it became clear that Gusmão was a brilliant student and had quickly outgrown the opportunities for study in Brazil, it was natural that he should travel all the way to Portugal to study at the University of Coimbra. At Coimbra he studied mathematics, physics, chemistry, astronomy, and philology (the language of literature). It must have been during these studies that Gusmão discovered the work of Francesco Lana, and Gusmão began to develop Lana's ideas for flying machines.
Gusmão knew that Lana's copper spheres would not be practical, but his early attempts at designing a flying machine used equally strange devices to lift the boat, such as powerful magnets.
Some say that Gusmão observed a soap bubble rising in the hot air above a candle flame and realized that hot air was the source of lift he was looking for. Whatever the source of his inspiration, in 1709 he asked if he could demonstrate a model of a flying machine to King John V of Portugal. Over the course of three days he made three separate demonstrations in front of the royal court, where "he propelled a ball up to the roof by combustion."
We don't know how Gusmão's model worked, but some writers believe that it was a paper hot air balloon, maybe even with a small burner fixed to the opening at the bottom. If this is true, then Gusmão produced a working model hot air balloon 73 years before the Montgolfier brothers. Unfortunately, he did not write down exactly how either his demonstration or his new design for an airboat worked.
Sadly, Gusmão did not live to complete his airboat. The Inquisition started to investigate him in 1724, and rather than face any charges, he fled to Toledo in Spain. He died of a fever only weeks after he arrived.
Scotland
The 18th century was a time of rapid development in chemistry and physics. Earlier researchers such as Robert Boyle and Robert Hooke had investigated the physical properties of air. But scientists like the Scotsman Joseph Black, the Englishmen Henry Cavendish and Joseph Priestley, and the Frenchman Antoine Lavoisier were now interested in the chemical properties of individual gases rather than the mixture that makes up air.
Joseph Black was Professor of Medicine at Glasgow University but lectured in chemistry as well. In 1766, Black read a paper written by Henry Cavendish that described new gases that Cavendish had isolated. One gas was particularly odd. Cavendish called it "inflammable air" because you could actually burn the gas in air. Almost as strange was its very low density: 13 liters of the new gas weighed the same as only 1 liter of ordinary air. We know this gas today as hydrogen.
Black knew the low density meant that a light bag filled with the new gas might just be able to float in the air. This would be a superb demonstration for his students — it would really show off the properties of the new gas. But what to use for the bag? Paper was no good because the gas passed right through it.
For hundreds of years, pig bladders had been used to make balloons and lightweight balls for games, so Black went to the local butcher's shop. Rather than a pig bladder, which would have been a bit small, Black chose an allantois from a butchered cow. An allantois is a long, sausage-shaped membrane that is both strong and gas-tight.
Back at his home, Black filled the allantois with Cavendish's new gas and tied off the opening. While curious visitors to Black's house watched, the allantois floated up to the ceiling and stayed there.
France
Historians don't know the exact date when Joseph Montgolfier had the idea of building a device carried into the sky with the lift from hot air. One story says that in 1777, Joseph watched laundry being dried over a fire and being lifted up by the hot air. We also know that Joseph had read a French translation of Cavendish's paper that described hydrogen for the first time.
In November 1782, Joseph heard about the problem of assaulting the fortress of Gibraltar, where all attempts to storm the fortress by normal means had failed. While thinking about this problem, Joseph started to wonder if troops could be carried up the cliffs using the same force that made cinders and embers fly up into the air above a bonfire.
To test his idea, he built a lightweight box. Rather than make solid flat panels, which would be too heavy, he made a wooden frame from thin sticks and covered the sides and top with taffeta, a very fine fabric made from silk. The box was 1 meter wide and 1 meter long by about 1.3 meters tall (about 3 feet by 3 feet by 4 feet), and open at the bottom. Underneath the open bottom Joseph crumpled some paper, which he lit to make a small fire. After a short while, the box rose into the air and bumped into the ceiling of his room.
After Joseph had demonstrated the model to his brother Etienne, they set about making a model three times as large. On December 14, 1782, they tested this larger model and the lift was so strong that it broke away and flew for 2 kilometers (1.2 miles) before landing in a field.
They made larger and more ambitious balloons during 1783, first demonstrating a small balloon in front of the public at Annonay (where they lived) and eventually demonstrating a giant balloon in front of the king and queen at Versailles. The balloon that they flew for the king even had live passengers — a duck, a sheep, and a rooster. These were intended to test the effects of flying on live animals before a human took to the air.
As soon as news reached Paris about the demonstration at Annonay, the physicist Jacques Charles started work on his own balloon design. Throughout 1783 there was a race between the Montgolfier brothers and Charles to design a balloon that could lift humans safely into the air. Charles wanted to use Henry Cavendish's hydrogen gas rather than hot air and built a number of test balloons made from fabric coated in a rubber solution.
During October 1783, Pilatre de Rozier tested a new, larger Montgolfier balloon. The Montgolfiers had built it for the first human flight and, because the demonstration would be in front of the king, had decorated it with portraits of the king, signs of the zodiac, and fleurs-de-lis. It was 23 meters (75 feet) tall and 15 meters (50 feet) in diameter, weighed 780 kg (about 1,700 pounds), and held 2,000 cubic meters (more than 70,000 cubic feet) of air. For the tests, it was filled with hot air from a large bonfire on the ground and securely tethered using long ropes, yet despite this, de Rozier's balloon was able to rise to a height of 99 meters (325 feet) in less than 15 seconds. As soon as these tests were complete, the Montgolfiers began the work to fit an iron brazier to the balloon so it could carry its own fire while it flew. By feeding the fire with wood and straw, de Rozier would be able to fly much farther than earlier balloons, which were simply held over a bonfire to fill with hot air before being released. Jacques Charles's final balloon was also under construction all through November, and it was only days away from flying when de Rozier launched the giant Montgolfier balloon.
On November 21, 1783, Pilatre de Rozier and the Marquis d'Arlandes took off in the Montgolfier balloon from the Chateau de la Muette. The first manned free flight in a balloon lasted only 25 minutes and covered 9 kilometers (5.6 miles), from the Chateau de la Muette, near the Bois de Boulogne, to the windmills on the Butte aux Cailles on theoutskirts of Paris. The balloon had plenty of remaining fuel and could have flown four or five times as far, but de Rozier brought the balloon down because burning embers from the fire had scorched holes in the envelope and it had started to smolder.
It is interesting that the first manned balloon flight should end in this way, as it shows why hot air balloons were abandoned shortly after that historic first flight. Although it was far easier to make a hot air balloon — it did not need to be sealed and filled with expensive hydrogen gas — burning embers often rose into the envelope and started smallfires. De Rozier himself was killed less than two years later in 1785 when the envelope of his balloon caught fire as he attempted to cross the English Channel.
So Who Did Invent the Balloon?
To my mind, the true home of the balloon is France. The idea of the balloon was certainly around already, and some people had already demonstrated little models of flying balloons — Bartholomeu de Gusmão, Black, maybe even an unknown Chinese lantern maker.
But nobody doubts that the balloon that allowed mankind to fly free in the sky for the first time was made by the Montgolfier brothers in France. They solved all of the technical problems, organized the manufacture of the balloon, and demonstrated it in front of a large audience. Joseph Montgolfier, in particular, took the vague ideas about lighter-than-air craft that had been floating around the scientific world for over 150 years and used them to make a working model. It was an amazing achievement.
Celebrations and Festivals
From prehistoric times, mankind has looked up at the sky with wonder. For prehistoric man the sun seemed to disappear into the ground, and then, out of the growing blackness of the sky, stars magically appeared. Sometimes meteors streaked down to the ground. Many of the early myths and legends tried to explain the mysteries of the natural world and, by explaining them, take away fear of the unknown.
It is no surprise that as soon as people learned how to make balloons, the idea of sending a light into the sky became important to them. Wherever the technology of balloon-making traveled, people adapted their festivals and celebrations to include balloons.
No people have taken the balloon to their hearts more than the Chinese. During the autumn festival in China, people write their hopes and wishes for the coming year onto the side of a paper Kongming lantern. The lanterns are released during the festival to carry people's wishes to the ancestors who live in the sky.
The people of Thailand also love paper hot air balloons. During November they hold a festival called Loi Krathong, where they give thanks for clean water. Small floating lanterns are made by placing a candle inside a cup of banana leaves, and during the festival hundreds are released to form a carpet of light that floats down the river. But in the north of Thailand they hold the Pi Yeng festival as well.
Rather than simply make lanterns that float on the water, they make lanterns that float on the air — Khom Loi, or paper hot air balloons. These are released in the late evening in huge numbers, filling the sky with hundreds of new stars to carry away bad luck and ill fortune.
But hot air balloons are not always a successful addition to festivals. In Rio de Janeiro, the people follow the Portuguese tradition of releasing paper hot air balloons during the June festivals to celebrate the lives of St. Anthony, St. Paul, and St. John. Over time the balloons have become larger and larger, trailing giant religious images or portraits of sports stars along with huge strings of fireworks. After a number of forest fires, near misses with aircraft, and damage to cars and houses, the authorities in Rio finally banned the giant hot air balloons in 1998.
(Continues...)
Excerpted from The Hot Air Balloon Book by Clive Catterall. Copyright © 2013 Clive Catterall. Excerpted by permission of Chicago Review Press Incorporated.
All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.
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Table of Contents
Contents
Introduction: How to Use This Book,Safety Note,
1. Balloon History,
2. How to Fly Your Balloon,
3. The Basic Trash Bag Balloon,
4. The Trash Bag Sausage,
5. The Kongming Lantern,
6. The Montgolfiere,
7. The Khom Loi,
8. The UFO Balloon,
9. The Taped Solar Tetroon,
10. The Welded Solar Tetroon,
11. Troubleshooting and Other Information,