science

Pink Floyd pigs

Pink Floyd pigs is a science topic covered in the lgStudy science library. This page brings together a partial reference excerpt, illustrations, worked examples, real-world applications and a short study plan, so you can understand Pink Floyd pigs rather than just read about it. In short: Inflatable flying pigs were one of the staple props of Pink Floyd's live shows. The first balloon was a sow, with a male pig balloon later introduced in their 1987 tour.

Key takeaways

Pink Floyd pigs belongs to science; place it in that map before memorising details.
Learn the definition first, then one example that makes the definition concrete.
Connect Pink Floyd pigs to a quantity you can measure, compute or draw — that is where exam questions come from.
Reproduce the core statement of Pink Floyd pigs from memory before moving on to harder problems.

Reference excerpt

Inflatable flying pigs were one of the staple props of Pink Floyd's live shows. The first balloon was a sow, with a male pig balloon later introduced in their 1987 tour. Pigs appeared numerous times in concerts by the band, promoting concerts and record releases, and on the cover of their 1977 album Animals. The image rights for the pigs passed to Roger Waters when he split from the rest of the group, though the pigs continued to be used by both Pink Floyd and Roger Waters in their gigs after his departure.

Animals

The original Pink Floyd pig, a 12-metre (40 ft), helium-filled balloon, was designed by Roger Waters and built in December 1976 by the artist Jeffrey Shaw with help of design team Hipgnosis, in preparation for shooting the cover of the Animals album. Plans were made to fly it over Battersea Power Station for a three-day photo-shoot, with a marksman standing by to shoot the pig down if it broke free. On the first day, poor weather and delays meant the pig was not launched, and the marksman was told he was not needed. On the second day, 3 December 1976, the marksman was not present because no one had told him to return. A gust of wind tore the pig loose. It disappeared from sight within five minutes, and was spotted by airline pilots at thirty thousand feet in the air. Flights at Heathrow Airport were cancelled as the huge inflatable pig continued eastwards across flight lanes and out over the English Channel, finally landing that night on a farm in Kent, where it frightened a herd of cows. The pig was recovered and repaired for the resumption of photography for the album cover, but the sky was cloudless and blue, thus "boring". However, the pictures of the sky from the first day were deemed suitable, so the album cover was created using a composite of photos from the first and third days. The pig that was originally floated above Battersea Power Station was called "Algie".

Use in the In the Flesh & The Wall tours After the album Animals was released in 1977, Pink Floyd began their In the Flesh tour. During concerts, the pig appeared around the PA stacks in a cloud of black smoke during performances of "Pigs (Three Different Ones)". The pig also appeared during each of Pink Floyd's The Wall concerts, black instead of pink, with a crossed hammers logo on its side. Waters would often refer to it directly before "Run Like Hell" (the pig appeared during the end of the previous song, "In the Flesh"). A short speech in reference to the pig and/or the song was given in every show, with each speech being different; this oddity has been used by bootleggers to identify which date a recording of the Wall tour was made. At the Berlin concert, it was only the head and it had fangs and red eyes.

Pink Floyd's use of the pig post-Roger Waters

For the 1987–1989 tour, the band added testicles to the pig, which David Gilmour has said was an attempt to get around Roger Waters having the image rights for the pig. The pig briefly appeared on 10 June 1988 at Beaujoire stadium in Nantes, France; it flew above the crowd for a very short time, after which it was seen to deflate. The pig is shown to be flown over the audience during the performance of "One of These Days" in the Delicate Sound of Thunder concert video, where it appears black with illuminated eyes. Pink Floyd added a 'deflated' pig to Roger Waters' auction of animation art from the film The Wall at Christie's London, on 21 September 1990, but the lot was withdrawn before the auction started. During the 1994 tour, two warthog-like pigs with protruding tongues were shown at the top of the stage side's speaker towers, sometimes just deflated, sometimes dropped on the ground after "One of These Days". This was also during Pulse, but for the VHS, Laserdisc, DVD and Blu-Ray releases, footage of the pigs falling was edited out. The pig made another appearance before the release of Echoes: The Best of Pink Floyd, when Capitol Records flew a replica of the original pig from Animals over the Capitol Records Tower in Hollywood, California. One damaged inflatable pig, believed to be from the 1988 Pink Floyd tour, was repaired by Nga Keith and flown again over a concert by the band The String Cheese Incident in Austin, Texas on 20 September 2003. Reportedly purchased by The String Cheese Incident manager Mike Luba from a former Pink Floyd stagehand, the 40-foot pig flew again over the Austin City Limits Music Festival audience during a cover of Pink Floyd's "Another Brick in the Wall (Part II)". During their Live 8 reunion with Waters, footage of Algie, over Battersea Power Station, was shown on a giant video screen behind the band. A replica of Algie was tethered above Battersea Power Station on 26 September 2011 to promote the Why Pink Floyd...? campaign, involving the reissue of the band's first 14 studio albums.

Roger Waters solo tours

… excerpt ends here. Continue reading the full article.

Illustrations

Worked examples

Example 1 — a first encounter with Pink Floyd pigs

Start with the simplest possible case. Write down what Pink Floyd pigs claims or describes in one sentence, then invent the smallest concrete situation in which that sentence is true. In science, the smallest case is usually a single object, a single equation or a single measurement. Check that every symbol or term in your sentence has a meaning in that case.

Example 2 — changing one variable

Take the situation from Example 1 and change exactly one quantity: double it, halve it, or set it to zero. Predict what should happen to Pink Floyd pigs before you calculate. Comparing your prediction with the result is the fastest way to find out whether you understand the idea or only the words.

Example 3 — an exam-style question

Typical questions about Pink Floyd pigs ask you to (a) state it precisely, (b) apply it to given data, and (c) explain a limitation. Practise writing all three answers in under five minutes; the third part is what separates a full-mark answer from an average one.

Applications of Pink Floyd pigs

In research: Pink Floyd pigs appears in science research whenever the underlying quantities have to be modelled precisely. Papers usually cite it as a starting assumption and then explore where it breaks down.
In technology and industry: Engineering practice reuses Pink Floyd pigs in design rules, simulations and safety margins. Knowing the idea lets you read a specification sheet and understand why the numbers look the way they do.
In the classroom: Pink Floyd pigs is common in secondary-school and first-year university syllabi. It links to neighbouring topics Balloons, Inflatable manufactured goods, Mascots introduced in 1976, so understanding it makes those chapters shorter.
In everyday life: Look for Pink Floyd pigs outside the textbook — in sport, cooking, traffic, electronics or the sky above you. An example you found yourself is remembered far longer than one you were given.

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How to study Pink Floyd pigs in 20 minutes

Read the reference excerpt below once, without taking notes.
Close the page and write down what Pink Floyd pigs means in your own words.
Compare your version with the excerpt and mark what you missed.
Work through the three examples above with pen and paper.
Explain Pink Floyd pigs out loud to somebody else — or to Teacher Smith in the lgStudy chat.

Frequently asked questions

What is Pink Floyd pigs in simple terms?

Inflatable flying pigs were one of the staple props of Pink Floyd's live shows. The first balloon was a sow, with a male pig balloon later introduced in their 1987 tour.

Why does Pink Floyd pigs matter?

Because it connects several science ideas at once: it gives you a definition you can apply, a quantity you can calculate, and a way to check whether a result is plausible.

How should I study Pink Floyd pigs?

Read the excerpt, restate it from memory, then work through the examples and applications listed on this page. The five-step study plan above takes about twenty minutes.

What does this page cover?

It gives you a compact reference excerpt plus original lgStudy explanations, examples, applications and study material on Pink Floyd pigs.