Balloons

📖 In short

A balloon is a bag filled with hot air or a light gas so it rises into the air. Small colorful balloons are for playing at parties, and huge balloons carry people in baskets underneath, flying over cities and deserts.

🤩 Did you know?

In 1960 Joseph Kittinger rose in a balloon to more than 31 kilometers up, then jumped with a parachute.
A hot-air balloon crossed the Pacific Ocean in 1991.
Some countries hold festivals where hundreds of colorful balloons fly together.
Small rubber balloons are dangerous for little children if they put them in their mouths.

🔎 Find out more

🌟 Why does it rise?

Hot air is lighter than cold air, and helium is lighter than air. So a balloon floats in the air like a cork floats on water.

🔍 The hot-air balloon

The hot-air balloon's basket has a big gas burner. The pilot lights it to heat the air in the balloon so it rises, and turns it off so the air cools and the balloon sinks. The wind decides which way it goes.

💡 The first flight

More than 240 years ago in France, the Montgolfier brothers made the first hot-air balloon. First they sent up a sheep, a duck and a rooster, and then people flew in it!