Want to pop a balloon without a bang? Just put a piece of tape on the balloon, and poke a hole through the tape. The tape will keep the balloon from popping, and the air will leak out slowly instead of being released all at once, which is what causes the popping sound.

Balloons pop at around 570 meters per second - faster than the speed of sound!

As a helium balloon gets higher and higher, the air around it is more and more spread out, so it pushes on the outside of the balloon less. That means the helium inside the balloon can push it out even farther, so the balloon actually gets a little bit bigger, until eventually, the rubber stretches too far and pops.

Sometimes, if the rubber on the balloon is strong enough, it will FREEZE before it pops. That's because the higher you go, the colder it gets. Around the height of airplanes, it's even cold enough to freeze rubber. These frozen balloons will pop too, but because they are frozen solid, they'll shatter into a bunch of tiny pieces, like a piece of glass.

Balloons have actually been around for a long time, except they weren’t made of rubber - they were made of animal bladders, which were then filled with air. Balloons were first floated using hot air in the 18th century, and the first modern rubber balloon was made by Michael Faraday in 1824 to conduct experiments using hydrogen.

Humans flew for the first time by using a hot air balloon in Paris on November 21, 1783.

Inhaling helium makes your voice squeaky because the sound from your vocal chords travels 3 times faster through helium than it does through air. The faster soundwaves result in a higher pitch. Another gas, Sulfur Hexafluoride, is heavier than air, and has the opposite effect - it makes your voice sound very deep.

Balloons have been used outside of Earth! In 1985, two weather balloons were placed in the atmosphere of Venus and took measurements such as temperature, pressure, and windspeed.

A procedure called angioplasty uses balloons to open blocked arteries or veins.