Helium and electricity

As Setanta might say he he he he........

Not really Steve..

It may depend on concentration, pressure and temperature.

Helium is usually a nonflammable gas...

And you have to tell the nature of your electrical current and how to apply it...

is it possible to make the gas lighter, is there anyway to do this like make it more buoyant

Hit it with enough juice and you'll get a plasma ... that's about it as far as I can think of. Not much remarkable about getting a plasma; induce sufficient energy into just about anything and you'll bring about a phase shift into plasma.

I don't think it's possible, you can increase a little bit the buoyancy but then you have to reinforce the container, hence losing the advantage...

Or make the container elastic, like a balloon, warm the helium, and it becomes less dense. Like a hot air balloon only better - though not cheaper.

hmm well rubber to could do the trick the reason i am asking is because i want to conduct an experiment. i want to see if i can make a peice board float. i know it sounds crazy, but i am just curious is if it can be done or not. the reason i think this is possible is because the air ships used to run on helium and well i was thinking is it possible to do this

Saw a myth busters program on this very subject just recently.

I dont recall the facts but an aircraft hanger sized space was needed to contain the helium filled plastic tubing that they used to lift a man off the ground.

Re: Helium and electricity

Nothing would happen.
Helium is not a conductor.

Under intense electrical pressure it will break down and form a plasma as Timber' said but you're going to need an awful lot of volts for that, not to mention current.
Get those welders out !
Air breaks down under roughly 20kV per inch. So you can spark across a one inch gap if you have about 20,000 volts.
Helium needs much more voltage to spark.

The only way you can make Helium lighter is to change what it's made of.
Helium consists of two electrons "orbiting" two protons.
If you want to remove and electron you ionise it but that's not going to do much for the weight. If you remove a proton you make Hydrogen. Boom !
Either way you can't do either of these things in your garage.

As has been suggested you could reduce the density of the gas in a container by heating it up but this isn't recommended as the temperatures involved are high and the effect minimal.

Helium is about as light as it gets anyway. The only element that's lighter is Hydrogen and that's explosive as the Nazis found out.

If you want to make a piece of board float, glue some styrofoam to it.

The Science of Buoyancy

The question of helium and electricity has been answered. You all are missing the explanation of what makes things float.

Whether something will float or not is determined by the "Archimedes Principle" which says that something in a fluid will experience an upward force equal to the weight of the fluid it displaces. This is applicable to things in water, or to things in air.

So everything that is in a fluid (either water or air or any other liquid or gas) and being pulled by gravity will experience two forces. There will be a downward force caused by gravity (this force is called 'weight'), and an upward force of buoyancy. You are feeling a slight upward force right now, but it is so much smaller than your weight that you don't notice it.

So if you want to make something (that isn't already floating) to float there are three things you can do.

1) You can make something bigger without increasing its weight by a significant amount. This is how a helium balloon works. The helium inside a balloon makes it much bigger which increases the buoyant force pushing it upward, but the helium is very light and doesn't add much weight.

So a helium balloon floats because its buoyant force is increased to a value greater than its weight.

2) You can make something lighter without decreasing its size. This is difficult to do because of the law of conservation of mass. For example cutting a piece of wood in half will not work because although it decreases its weight by half, it also decreases its size and thus its buoyant force.

3) You can make the fluid heavier. The buoyant force is equal to the weight of fluid displaced. This means that if the fluid is heavier (more dense) an object will displace more weight of fluid.

This is why things float in water that don't float in air. On days with high air pressure things will float a bit easier.

It is impossible to get a piece of wood to float without either making it lighter (while keeping the size the same) or making it bigger (without chaging its weight) or putting it is a denser fluid.

Incidentally gluing a piece of styrofoam works in water because you can treat it as one object. The styrofoam is fairly light (especially compared to water) and therefore it makes a bigger object that but doesn't increase the weight enough to keep it from floating.