After doing research on the reasons for the spontaneous balloon poppage I experienced during the Purdue Open Invitational Dance competition somewhere in the late 1990s, The pops made me wonder if I could dance off time or off balance during a competition heat.
I think I got the answer today on why it happened. I can remember that the emcee of the dance competition remarked on one of the balloon pops saying that it was like a starting gun firing for some relay race.
Inert static electricity (and I think that competition was on a very dry, very cold day) caused the sudden balloon pops. The dance competition floor was wooden (it was a basketball court) and the balloons were hand-blown (no helium pump), two ironies here but it still doesn't matter. Very dry air was still the culprit, and as I saw those usually innocent-looking balloons move across the floor, it created friction, and then with that friction, inert static---even if you did not see the actual sparks--built up and eventually the balloons popped as a result.
I also remember what my Dad told me about static electricity that causes irritating shocks on dry, cold days. If I can get those shocks during these times of day, I guess these things happened to those balloons - the static build-up also.
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