how can you stick a needle through a balloon without popping it?

Put a piece of tape on the balloon.

Stick pin through the tape.

The balloon won't pop.

Ta-dah!

Needle Through Balloon

You can stick a needle or a skewer through a balloon by poking it through the two ends: Where the balloon is tied off & the opposite side. You don't need tape for it, but it helps.

The reason behind such a feat is tension. The two points of the balloon that I stated aren't stretched out & therefore doesn't have a lot of tension there. Therefore you can insert an item there without breaking the tension of the entire balloon.

Everywhere else on the balloon is very tight & stretched out, so if you poked there, the extra force breaks the tension & the balloon pops.

It's as simple as that!

It has nothing to do with semipermeable membranes. The reason balloons pop is that when you stick them with a pin, you make a little hole in the balloon. The air in the balloon pushing on the rubber forces the hole open some more, often causing it to rapidly rip apart. thus it pops. If a balloon isn't very highly pressurized (that is, you don't inflate it way too much), and you push the pin in carefully, the pressure inside the balloon won't cause the hole made by the pin to rip open more. And so it wont pop.

I can think of three places:

- Stick it THROUGH the knot,

- Stick it through the "bellybutton" thingy that it outside of the knot,

- Stick it inside the balloon, but barely inside the knot. The balloon tends to be less-stressed in this area unless it is inflated near the burst pressure.

You could get geeky about it, and freeze the latex (liquid nitrogen?) so that it becomes a solid, then drive a needle through it.

Fill the balloon with water. If you stick a needle in it, it will leak, but it won't pop!

Most important is that the ballon not be filled to capacity. The more stretched the elastic is, the more difficult it will be to puncture without causing a rip to form. See my answer to your other question.

I have done this. Put some scotch tape on the balloon first, where you stick the needle.

See my answer to your previous question. Don't fill it to a breaking point.

The reason the tape trick works is because you have reinforced that point on the balloon. My trick works just as well. :-)

maybe if you put the needle in the balloon, just keep it there though, don't take it out. it's through, right?