What would happen if astronauts popped a water balloon in zero

Here is an amusing test of my ability to do thought experiments.

I have not looked at the movie, but this is what I would expect:

Water in low-g tends to stay in a blob, maybe breaking up into a few
more blobs, each fairly self contained.

As for a water balloon: well the elastomer wrapper would rip and fly
apart due to the tension stress. But the water itself is not under
stress, you cannot compress a liquid. So after the wrapper has flown
away, the water left behind would be a few blobs, fairly stable - they
would be stirred up a bit by the peices of elastomer flapping around and
hitting the surface of the blob.

I wonder how close that is to the movie. Later today I will take a
look, but I am limited by modem speed right now.

===

On Earth the big splash is completely caused by gravity, the water is no
longer supported by the elastomer so it drops to the ground. The
weight of the water causes it to spread out as zillions of droplets even
before it hits the ground.

Cheers,

Charles R.

> That is interesting. Prior to viewing this, I would have felt on
> fairly safe ground in speculating that the water would explode
> everywhere.
>
> Regards,
>
> Mike Combs
>
> Interesting!
>
> 1.9MByte Quick Time movie
>
> >http://microgravity.grc.nasa.gov/balloon/balloo01.mov
>

>

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