Balloon

A balloon is a flexible bag that can be inflated with a gas, such as helium, hydrogen, nitrous oxide, oxygen, or air. Modern day balloons are made from materials such as rubber, latex, polychloroprene, or a nylon fabric, and can come in many colors. Some early balloons were made of dried animal bladders, such as the pig bladder. Some balloons are used for decorative purposes, while others are used for practical purposes such as meteorology, medical treatment, military defense, or transportation. A balloon's properties, including its low density and low cost, have led to a wide range of applications.

The rubber balloon was invented by Michael Faraday in 1824, during experiments with various gases.

Applications

Decoration or entertainment

Party balloons are mostly made of a natural latex tapped from rubber trees, and can be filled with air, helium, water, or any other suitable liquid or gas. The rubber's elasticity makes the volume adjustable. As shown in the photo to the right, they can come in different colors like the rainbow such as red, orange, yellow, green, blue, purple, etc.

The Twenty-One Balloons

The Twenty-One Balloons is a novel by William Pène du Bois, published in 1947 by the Viking Press and awarded the Newbery Medal for excellence in American children's literature in 1948. The story is about a retired schoolteacher whose ill-fated balloon trip leads him to discover an island full of great wealth and fantastic inventions. The events and ideas are based both on scientific fact and imagination, and the descriptions are accompanied by illustrations by du Bois.

Plot summary

The introduction compares two types of journeys: one that aims to reach a place within the shortest time, and another that begins without regard to speed and without a destination in mind. Balloon travel is said to be ideal for the second kind.

The main story begins with the rescue of Professor William Waterman Sherman, who is picked up by a steamship while floating among a strange wreck of twenty deflated gas balloons in the North Atlantic. Sherman, a recently retired schoolteacher, was last seen three weeks ago leaving San Francisco on a giant balloon, determined to spend a year drifting alone. The world waits breathlessly to find out how Sherman could have circumnavigated the globe in record time and landed in the ocean with twenty balloons rather than the one with which he began his journey. After several days' rest and a hero's welcome, the professor recounts his journey before a captivated audience.

99 Luftballons

"99 Luftballons" (German: Neunundneunzig Luftballons, "99 balloons") is an anti-war protest song by the German band Nena from their 1983 self-titled album. An English version titled "99 Red Balloons", with lyrics by Kevin McAlea, was also released after widespread success of the original in Europe and Japan. The English version is not a direct translation of the German and contains somewhat different lyrics.

Background and writing

While at a June 1982 concert by the Rolling Stones in West Berlin, Nena's guitarist Carlo Karges noticed that balloons were being released. As he watched them move toward the horizon, he noticed them shifting and changing shapes, where they looked like strange spacecraft (referred to in the German lyrics as a "UFO"). He thought about what might happen if they floated over the Berlin Wall to the Soviet sector.

Etymology

A direct translation of the title is sometimes given as "Ninety-Nine Air Balloons"; however, the song became known as "Ninety-Nine Red Balloons" in English. The title "99 Red Balloons" almost scans correctly with the syllables falling in the right places within the rhythm of the first line of lyrics: "red" partially replacing a flourish of the singer before "Luft". Neunundneunzig (99) has one syllable more than "ninety-nine", so the last syllable and "luft" are blended in the English translation and become "red".

Kite (geometry)

In Euclidean geometry, a kite is a quadrilateral whose four sides can be grouped into two pairs of equal-length sides that are adjacent to each other. In contrast, a parallelogram also has two pairs of equal-length sides, but they are opposite to each other rather than adjacent. Kite quadrilaterals are named for the wind-blown, flying kites, which often have this shape and which are in turn named for a bird. Kites are also known as deltoids, but the word "deltoid" may also refer to a deltoid curve, an unrelated geometric object.

A kite, as defined above, may be either convex or concave, but the word "kite" is often restricted to the convex variety. A concave kite is sometimes called a "dart" or "arrowhead", and is a type of pseudotriangle.

Special cases

If all four sides of a kite have the same length (that is, if the kite is equilateral), it must be a rhombus.

If a kite is equiangular, meaning that all four of its angles are equal, then it must also be equilateral and thus a square. A kite with three equal 108° angles and one 36° angle forms the convex hull of the lute of Pythagoras.

Kite (novel)

Kite is a young adult novel about red kites by Melvin Burgess. It contains 15 chapters and was first published in 1997.

When Taylor Mase steal a red kite egg, he is not expecting it to hatch out — but it does. Taylor feels an urge to protect the fragile baby bird, which faces many hazards, including Taylor's own father, a gamekeeper.

Publishing Information

References

Kite (disambiguation)

A kite is a type of aircraft.

Kite or kites may also refer to:

Biology

Music

Film

Ships