Ooooh, i love this idiot! It overlaps my historical leather working hobby with my hatred of pseudohistorical bullshit.
So, a 30m diameter sphere contains 14.000m3 of gas. Every liter of hydrogen lifts 1.14 grams, and for helium it’s 1.05 grams. So 14.000m3 = 14 million liters, or about 14 million grams, which is 14 tons. Sounds pretty decent until you realize that animal hide isn’t exactly weightless.
A tanned cowhide, before it’s split, is over 4cm thick. Vegetable tanned cattlehide weighs something like 40 kg for a 5m2. But lets see how thick out balloon is. If it can lift 6 tons, it can only weigh some 8000kg itself. Our 30m sphere has a surface area of some 2800m2, so that means our animal hides can weigh, at most, 8000/2800=2.8kg per square meter. Those at home have probably noticed that 2.8 is a bit less than the 8kg you need to use cowhide.
So, what kind of leather or hide were those balloons then? Well leather is usually sold in “ounces per square foot” (even in Europe), so we can just look it up. 2.8kg per square meter is about 9.2 ounce per square foot (says wolfram alpha), and a handy table I have printed says that’s around 3.6mm thick.
So, we are too believe that the Egyptians made a 30m balloon, out of what is basically cheap-belt and saddlebag leather, somehow got that not just air-tight, while being ridiculously thin, and then used it to build massive structures.
Wow TIL, the ancient Egyptians knew how to harness hydrogen gas! /s
Supposedly the Egyptians did know how to make a simple battery. Mythbusters reproduced the battery and it produced around 4 volts. It only takes 1.5 volts to produce hydrogen gas from water via electrolysis. It’s technically within the scientific capability of the Egyptians to do this, although I don’t think it likely.
It was not Egyptian and almost certainly not a battery.
Milo Rossi has covered this in detail in a very good video.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cRZR_TeVi5Y
He also has a follow-up to that video with an expert on the subject, an actual archaeologist who has studied the so-called battery.
It’s capable of being used as a battery. Doesn’t mean it was.
Gotta love how some people alive today cannot comprehend the fact humans have been able to build large structures long before we had things like crains and electricity.
I imagine they are the same people who look at something like a castle in the UK built in the 12th century or the great wall of China and assume that it was impossible for humans to have built them because they believe humans were too dumb (ironically) to have figured out how to lift rocks using any other method than crains.
In case this is of interest to you, since 1997, a group of archaeologists and experts have been building a castle in France as accurately as they can in the way it was done in the 13th century. Apart from adding certain things for safety reasons, they try to be as authentic as possible. Of course, it’s taken decades and it’s still not done… but that’s because it’s a freakin’ castle. (Also, they don’t have a huge workforce, but that’s something else.)
It’s even had a practical use. They were able to apply what they learned when reconstructing Notre Dame after the fire.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Guédelon_Castle
There was also a British documentary series about it with three archaeologists from Britain who go to contribute to the project and live in a Medieval style- https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ydoRAbpWfCU&list=PL72jhKwankOiwI5zt6lC3eQtsQDxOaN_g
There are several recreations of old Age of Sail ships, made historically accurate via historical methods, and its been incredibly educational for historians worldwide.
Reenactment like this is extremely useful in recreating information that was either a professional secret, or considered so blatantly obvious nobody ever had to write it down.
