AJ_Dual said:
The black in the white/clear baloon came about as a medical laser demonstration to show people how they could do very selective treatments, like in eye-surgery to show people how the laser wouldn't cook their corneas, the lens, or the vitreous humor, but would cook/cut/burn the offending matter back in the retina.
So they'd take a clear balloon with a black balloon inside it and pop the black balloon leaving the clear one unscathed because of it's higher absorption of the laser energy, giving the audience a very quick and visceral understanding of what lasers could do and how less invasive certain procedures were than traditional scalpel procedures. (They didn't have to cut the clear balloon to get the black one, etc.)
Some of the things that will help will be getting a large clear balloon and blowing it up as tautly as possible so it's stretched as thin as possible and won't diffuse the laser too much. Then use a smaller black ballloon so it can be inflated tautly so it will pop well when lased. If you're using two balloons of the same size they will pressurize each other to a greater degree, and the black one on the inside will have to be quite underinflated to fit. And the underinflation will cause it to leak, not pop.
OK. This is REALLY gonna tell my age, and how much of an odd duck I am. :
I used to work at Paper Warehouse. I think several years ago it became Party America, or something like that. Party supply store, with no alcohol involved. Anyway, I developed a trick for putting two balloons together. There are two reasons for it. #1, it looks kinda cool, and #2, depending on how you do it, you can come up with some interesting colors not readily available. Putting one balloon inside another is kind of an art, and takes practice. Much, much easier to do with a pump to air them up.
Should probably have a 12" balloon and an 8" to be on the safe side.
Insert the 8" balloon into the 12" and align the two openings one right on top of the other.
Inflate the 8" balloon to it's full tightness, tie it off.
Inflate the 12" balloon to around 11".
Quickly push the tied off end of the 8" into the 12".
Tie off the 12".
Not inflating it fully will insure that you do not compress the 8" balloon to the point that it will not pop.
One of the experiments that I did with this arrangement was to place two pieces of tape in a cross on the outer balloon. You can then, carefully and with practice, stick a pin through the outer and pop the inner balloon.
If you want to just get a thicker skinned balloon of a different color, use two balloons of the same size. Inflate the inner one all the way, and tie them both off. You don't have to add any air to the outer balloon, as the inner balloon will push out on it. Advantage of doing this is that it will keep regular latex balloons filled with helium floating for a longer period of time. Helium, being only two protons/neutrons in the nucleus of the atom, can slip between the molecules of latex and escape into the atmosphere.
