Film Theory: Pixar's Up, How Many Balloons Does It Take To Lift A House?

Magician and in general, no one asked you to do that. Stunt performer David Blaine recently made headlines when he used

balloons

to soar nearly five miles above the Arizona desert before parachuting back to Earth. It sure is a bold and cool trick, I guess, but people compare it to it. movie up they're getting a little carried away if you ask me, I mean if he really wanted to do the trick properly he would have landed from that skydive and then revealed that he had a boy scout with him the whole time, that's a trick. Hello Internet, welcome to Film Theory, the program that helps you reach new heights in your knowledge of

film

and television before bursting your

balloons

and ruining your favorite franchises.

I can't help it. I'm like life's sharp little needle of sadness. Let's ignore that ominous omen. However, for a moment and consider the majesty of Pixar, as there are almost no new movies coming out in 2020. I've had a fantastic opportunity to revisit some old classics, not the bygone classics from the golden age of cinema or the underrated futuristic anime or even obscure French documentaries about potato picking ah leglen, you will always remain on my Watch Later playlist no, I've been watching old Pixar movies, I haven't exactly kept my love for Pixar a secret on this channel, but sometimes it can be difficult to talk about his movies.

I've actually wanted to make a

theory

about this for a long time, but every time I start watching the movie I get so dehydrated from crying after the first 10 minutes that I have to stop if you've never gotten past those first few. 10 minutes, let me spoiler alert to summarize the movie so we can continue with today's

theory

. Us and an old man named Carl use balloons to fly his and his late wife's

house

to his dream adventure destination of Paradise Falls in South America along with an annoying boy scout and a talking dog. . Wow, this is a remarkably easy movie to summarize.

The obvious theory about Up is whether you can actually blow up a

house

with balloons, and although several videos have attempted to answer this question, even going that far. As for building a miniature of Carl's house and blowing it up, I have never been satisfied with the answer, methodology or math that has been used and I have also been left dissatisfied when no one answers the other obvious question here, even if I can. arrangement to put the house in the air. Is there any chance it could reach another continent? I guess when you want something done right you have to do it yourself and that, my friends, is the plan for today's theory, so my friends buckle up. in like david blaine because today we are going to go up and away the first question we have to delve into is the obvious one: if Carl really could have floated his house using balloons as we see in the movie and I admit that I am far from the first person who tried to answer To this, David Blaine showed that it can be done with a person and National Geographic shows how difficult it is to prove that it can be done with a house, so I have to say that the house they built was more of a house-shaped box than anything. that people can live in, that will come with a lot of things that will weigh down the entire project.

The theoretical physics behind this is not that complicated since helium is lighter than air. it creates a small

lift

ing force and if you get enough helium in enough balloons, yes you could theoretically

lift

anything, a house, a yacht, even the statue of liberty, the real question is how

many

balloons would you need and that one requires a little more job. I've seen estimates of this figure online ranging from Wired's claim that the job would be done on about a hundred thousand balloons to Up director Pete Doctor saying the figure they arrived at was around 23 and a half million. balloons a year.

There's a little difference, you know, there's a margin of error. Nice try guys, but here in

film

theory you only get partial credit if you don't show your work, so I wanted to do the math myself along with some proof from our team. friend austin on the science of game theory first question how much

does

carl's house weigh? There are actually

many

considerations depending on the materials used to make the house, but generally older houses are made of heavier materials Carl and Ellie renovate a house known as a Queen Anne style house, which is what You consider classic Victorian homes, think high ceilings, tower structures or bay windows, and porches with ornate lattices called gingerbread ornaments.

We can also see that Carl's house has a heavy slate roof. That's why you have that scalloped pattern on the top of the building. This house was probably built in the early 20th century at the latest, as it was falling apart when Carl and Ellie built it in 1939. According to a construction. company, a good estimate for the weight of a two-story house like Carl's is 275 pounds per square foot, although we have to subtract the weight of the house's foundation because, when the house is raised, fortunately you don't see the weight of the house. foundations with her.

The upper house now exists, a replica was built in the suburbs of Salt Lake City, Utah, and covers 2,800 square feet, so even if we imagine it has a heavy base of 200,000 pounds or 91,000 kilograms, we still have a weight. of 570,000 260,000 kilograms that we need to lift using nothing but balloons, so as you can imagine, we will need a lot of balloons, which brings us to our second question: how much weight can a helium balloon lift? Obviously, this question depends on the type of balloon, both Mr Street Magic and the people at National Geographic opted for large weather balloons, but if we want to recreate ourselves, we are talking about latex party city, rub it on the head and stick it to the wall, type balloons on average.

In one These balloons hold about 9 liters of helium, which should have the capacity to lift about 11 grams of mass. We also have to start subtracting the weight of things that are not in the house and that helium also lifts. The balloon itself weighs approx. 2 grams and if we imagine Carl using very fine fishing line for the strings, which I chose because the ribbon used on party balloons would actually be too heavy at the lengths Carl needs, that will add about another 0.7 grams per 50 feet. length of the string, therefore, each balloon has the capacity to lift approximately 8.3 grams if we do not

take

into account other outward forces, such as the friction of the balloons rubbing against each other, which makes the total weight of the 570,000 pound house to about 258 million 547 thousand 651 grams that we get, Carl will need a total of 31 million 150,319 balloons to get that house off the ground.

I'm having trouble imagining what that many balloons would look like. Well, here are some pictures from the balloon festival that took place in Cleveland, Ohio just a couple ago. miles from where I was born, two months before I was born in September 1986, in an attempt to break the Guinness World Record for the most balloons launched at one time, what you're seeing in that news coverage is one and one half a million helium balloons, so Carl's house would need that 20 times over, probably blocking the sun in the process. Additionally, the Cleveland Balloon Festival had such a nice ending as it didn't, Guinness refused to recognize it as a world record and the balloons hindered a search and rescue mission for two lost fishermen who ended up dead cleveland classic pulling a cleveland is not funny people dying is just a cleveland movement love you guys we originated the rock and roll hall of fame and the ability to set fire to rivers because they are so polluted im originally from cleveland so i can make that joke , but Cleveland is like the double Baltic of cities.

I love you so much, Cleveland, okay, so in theory you can raise your house to the sky if you have it. 30 million spare balloons lying around, but that still

does

n't confirm the events of the movie because we have to answer our other important question here: could Carl really blow up the house to paradise? Unfortunately, when you have 30 million balloons attached to your shower curtain at home. It's not going to be very effective driving, like trying to drive your car by sticking your arm out the window so Carl is at the mercy of the wind patterns, but there are some indications that the wind could end up blowing Carl's house into Paradise Falls.

Paradise Falls as a location doesn't actually exist in real life, but is based on Venezuela's Angel Falls, the tallest waterfall in the world. It's unclear what part of the United States Carl is from, but he'll need to be anywhere in the lower 48 states. blown south and east landing somewhere near the equator eastward weather direction is pretty typical north of 30 degrees latitude, which is pretty much the entire United States, the predominant wind pattern is the jet stream subtropical that blows from west to east in the opposite direction to the direction of the land. is rotating in order to go south, the house needs to be trapped in what is called a Hadley cell, which is a mass of rotating air that occurs between the equator and about 30 degrees latitude, the air from the equator It heats up, rises high into the atmosphere, and moves. towards the poles, at which point the air cools, sinks and returns towards the equator.

It's certainly lucky that Carl's house ends up around Paradise Falls, but when you look at weather patterns it's not impossible and if you think it's impossible for helium balloons to travel that kind of distance, there's actually anecdotal evidence to suggest otherwise. In 2013, a British student launched helium balloons with letters attached to them into the sky only to retrieve one in Australia more than 10,000 miles away, so who knows, maybe that storm blew up in the movie. Carl's house directly to Hadley's cell, he needed to land right at the foot of Paradise's Falls. I should have stuck to what the script said at the time instead of trying to spin it off to what I thought it was going to say and then it didn't happen.

It makes a lot of sense because waterfalls don't have feet and he doesn't end up at the bottom of the falls, he ends up at the top of the falls, it's stupid, it was a stupid attempt to add life, so yes, you can build a house with balloons and Those balloons can fly to the other side of the world, so does that mean Carl's plans are actually kind of plausible when you squint? Well, there's one final little problem, you know, the one that's really going to get in Carl's way beyond depleting the world's supply. of latex and helium and having to be very lucky with weather patterns, the cost.

We know from Carl and Ellie's montage at the beginning of the movie that they're not exactly rolling in dough, they have to break that change jar over and over again. over and over again to make ends meet and even just thinking about it makes me cry, hang in there, mate, you have to talk about cold, brutal science, but it's not like either of us are sitting on a trust fund and, uh, buying and filling that. many balloons will be a little expensive. Helium costs approximately one hundred and nineteen dollars per thousand cubic feet. The best price I can find on balloons is a little less than five cents per balloon, not to mention the fact that we're going to be needing almost 300,000 miles of fishing line to hold them all together when you calculate all those numbers, the cost of the The 280 million liters of helium you need is one million one hundred seventy-eight thousand one hundred seventy dollars, the balloons themselves will cost you 1.5 million dollars and the fishing line will end up costing two million three hundred eighty-eight thousand one hundred ninety and one dollars for a total cost of 5 million 108 302.

You can't put a price on a significant romantic gesture, but If it costs you 5.1 million dollars, maybe consider purchasing some real estate nearby and before any of my viewers billionaires get the idea that they could do it themselves, consider the following if it

take

s you 10 seconds to blow up and tie each one. Of those balloons you would need to spend almost 10 years inflating balloons non-stop to perform the trick. Sorry to burst your balloon, but hey, that's just a theory, a movie theory, and if you enjoyed this episode, be sure to hit the subscribe button. I just crossed the incredible nine million subscriber milestone and we're one million away from getting that diamond play button guys this would really validate this channel so if you're not subscribed consider hitting that subscribe button actually it's no use.

There is a lot to change the way you interact with YouTube in general, so support the channel at no cost to you and honestly, if you enjoyed this video, we have many more like it on the channel and we have many more on the way to finish. 2020, so the year may suck, but I hope these videos make you feel a little happier, give you a little distraction, help you remember which movies are out now, and might make you feel a little better about the life, so hit the subscribe button. You are here for you, we appreciate itwhen you're here for us.

I'll see you all next week.