Flying Heavenly Lanterns of Desire - When the Stars Light Up!

The place of the appearance of celestial torches belongs to the East. There they have been very loved by people since ancient times. To us in Russia, this entertainment only comes and grows famous.

Tradition tells us that the sky lanterns began to be applied by Zhuge Liang to the end of the second and the beginning of the third centuries in the armed actions. There is an opinion that as a result of this there was a feeling of fear to the enemy. And, the sources in fact confirm this.

They took a huge bag made of paper and placed the lamp on the oil from below, the heated air from the heater forced to lift the structure upwards. The opposing forces regarded this as a kind of deity on the side of Zhuge Liang, the opponents were seized with fear from the light in the sky.

The discrepancies about the stage of the appearance of celestial flashlights are - for example, Joseph Needham, speaks about the III century BC. Sources of information tell us that at first the celestial flashlights were used to transmit signals between the regiments of the army, and only later they entered into a religious basis.

Made of wood lightweight frame, most often the material is ordinary bamboo. In the middle, a burner is attached to the bamboo frame. A burner consists of a cotton cloth, which is impregnated with wax, in some embodiments, paper is used, which is impregnated with flammable liquids. Combustible chemicals are one of the possible options for obtaining a combustible mixture. The dome is placed on the frame, it is mostly made of rice paper, impregnated with a special anti-inflammable mortar, which allows the paper not to burn, mulberry can still be used . The base and dome of Chinese lanterns can be executed in different forms, from ordinary geometric figures (, ball, ellipse) to figures of different characters of completely different subjects.

Heavenly flashlight is like a balloon, but smaller. The air mass contained in the internal cavity is heated by the burner. Its weight decreases because of heating, and accordingly, the density decreases, since it is directly proportional to the mass and inversely proportional to the volume. Therefore, a force is taken, which drags the flashlight high into the sky.

Calculation of the parameters of Chinese lanterns is simple. After all, it's easy to determine the temperature under the dome of the sky lantern of the heart, then we determine the mass and then the density. In general, you can find the speed with which our Chinese flashlight will rise.

Having a size of about a meter in height and weighing about 150 grams, such a flying object is gaining altitude somewhere 800 m in 10-18 minutes.

I want to note the safety rules when using Chinese lanterns. It can not be run close to airports and also very close to fire-hazardous structures. In addition, it is undesirable to let the sky lanterns in windy weather.