-3

Kinda like pop rocks puts bubbles of carbon dioxide gas into their candy to make it pop, If someone put bubbles of helium into some sort of food light enough then would it float? And how do they even put gas into food in the first place?

reid
  • 1
  • 1
    Putting helium into food would not make it float in air. Even if you got helium into puffed up food, it would rapidly diffuse out. – Ed V Oct 20 '21 at 23:46
  • Then what about incased food like hard candy (sugar, lactose, corn syrup, and flavors, frozen together)? – reid Oct 20 '21 at 23:50
  • Helium will still diffuse out and air will diffuse in. And it will not float in air. You might be able to make a “molecular gastronomy” foam, using helium as the fill gas, then float that in a dense gas, but it would not last long. – Ed V Oct 20 '21 at 23:54
  • See this for how they get carbon dioxide into Pop Rocks. – Todd Minehardt Oct 20 '21 at 23:54
  • I see, is that just because helium is a different gas? – reid Oct 20 '21 at 23:57
  • Helium consists of small atoms that can easily diffuse or effuse. Have you heard of ice cream made using liquid nitrogen? It is quite good and the nitrogen puffs it up a bit as it boils away. Replace the liquid nitrogen with liquid nitrous oxide (“laughing gas”) or liquid xenon (big bucks) and it would be more puffed up and way more fun! – Ed V Oct 21 '21 at 00:07
  • Makes sense, finally are there any other gasses you know of that would be light enough to float, and be nontoxic? – reid Oct 21 '21 at 00:12
  • Not really. You might look at this answer: https://chemistry.stackexchange.com/a/16059/79678 and the other answers. – Ed V Oct 21 '21 at 00:25
  • See: https://chemistry.stackexchange.com/questions/135436/can-we-fill-potato-chips-bags-with-a-gas-other-than-nitrogen/135438 – Nilay Ghosh Oct 21 '21 at 03:40

1 Answers1

1

On the other hand, some of the more dense gases might float a sufficiently "fluffy" food (cheese puffs? popcorn? That's another question...). You could fill a bowl with perfluorobutane, halocarbon 610, with density around 11 kg/m3 at ~0 °C and see what comes up.

There are denser gases, such as uranium hexafluoride, $\ce{UF6}$,with density around 14 kg/m3 at ~50 °C, but that's nasty stuff with which to work, worse than perfluorobutane.

DrMoishe Pippik
  • 32,365
  • 1
  • 35
  • 69