Tissue Paper Hot Air Balloon Revisited
Posted on: January 30, 2011
Okay, I’ve been a bad boy. It was more than a year ago I said I would update the post with the instructions. You guys didn’t call me on it, so I forgot. The original post is here along with a pdf of the plans I had printed for myself:
Original Tissue Paper Hot Air Balloon Post
The original plans make a balloon that is 60 inches high. That is perfect for the classroom, it takes three pieces of tissue paper per panel and you need six panels. You will find I went big on this one and made a 90 inch version for myself. It is rather unwieldy and difficult to handle, but bigger balloon means bigger lift. At this point, I can put one of these 60″ balloon together in about an hour, where it takes the kids at least 2 hours.
One of the challenges we ran into was finding the aluminum wire we used to keep the mouth open. You want this for two important reasons; first, to add ballast; but more importantly, without it, the kids can’t catch the balloons on their heads. I found the wire at Dick Blick, an art supply store. They list it under sculpture wire, we use the 14 gauge wire. It costs $16 for a 350 foot spool. Each balloon uses about 3 feet. That’s a lot of hot air balloons.
When it is too windy outside, we tend to launch these in the gym. I have two heat sources. The indoor one is a heat gun I purchased from Harbor Freight on sale for $10. It works great, I make sure I handle it so nobody gets burned. The outside source is a plumbers propane torch. Nobody handles that but me, I don’t need to write up any (more) accident reports. If you are using the torch, make sure the kids keep the balloon opened up, if you aren’t careful you can catch the balloon on fire. Oops, only did that once, very cool though. If you do that, light it from the bottom, it goes up into the air and disintegrates … poof. Bad science teacher.
Some day I may make one of those cool chimney launchers, but then I’ll have to store it in my room. It’s already looking like Sanford and Sons in my classroom, I don’t know how much more junk I can store.
Physics & Physical Science Demos, Labs, & Projects for High School Teachers 
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