Uploaded November 2015 | Updated September 2026, 2 weeks ago
Balloons pop in 2 ways in these videos.
A balloon with low internal pressure bursts through the growth of a single crack, but above a critical pressure, it breaks apart from multiple cracks.
"I started to get interested in this question after seeing an artistic photograph of an exploding balloon,” said Sébastien Moulinet of the Ecole Normale Supérieure (ENS) in Paris.
“I noticed that the cracks seemed to be separated by the same distance” and that they advanced in parallel. These properties can produce a kind of “rib-cage” structure of fragments.
Balloons pop in 2 ways in these videos.
A balloon with low internal pressure bursts through the growth of a single crack, but above a critical pressure, it breaks apart from multiple cracks.
"I started to get interested in this question after seeing an artistic photograph of an exploding balloon,” said Sébastien Moulinet of the Ecole Normale Supérieure (ENS) in Paris.
“I noticed that the cracks seemed to be separated by the same distance” and that they advanced in parallel. These properties can produce a kind of “rib-cage” structure of fragments.
