A website "urban myth" claims that a man in California tied a number of balloons filled with helium to his chair in the garden with a view to gently hovering above the neighborhood. The moment he cut the anchoring cord he shot upwards to a height of about 4000m. Several hours later he was rescued by a helicopter after being spotted by an airline pilot.
a) If the combined masses of the man and the chair was 70kg, calculate their weight
b) what is meant by the term upthrust
c) Show that the upthrust in N from the balloons is about 1.3 V where V is the total volume of balloons in cubic metres. The Density of air is 1.29 kg/m³
d) Write down an expression, in terms of V, for the weight of the helium in the balloons. The density of helium is 0.18 kg/m³
e) Calculate total volume of the balloons required to just lift the man and his chair from the ground. Assume weight of balloon material is negligible.
f) Explain why any viscous drag force can be ignored in previous calculation