Activity 4: Bang! Bang! Big Balloon!

Materials:
 30-cm round latex balloon
 A permanent felt-tip marking pen
 60-cm piece of string
 Tape measure

Procedure:
1. Inflate your balloon until it is about 10 cm in diameter.Do not tie the end.
2. Using the felt-tip marker, make six dots on the balloon in widely scattered
locations. Label one dot “home” and the others A to E. The home dot
represent the Milky Way galaxy, and the others represent galaxies formed
in the early universe.
3. Without letting air out of the balloon,use the string and tape measure
to ,measure the distance from the home dot to each of the other dots.
Record the distance in the table under the heading “Time 1.”
4. Inflate the balloon so that its diameter is about 5 cm bigger.
Again,measure the distances to each of the dots “, and record the
distance under “Time 2”.
5. Inflate the balloon in 5-cm increments for three more times.After each
inflation,measure and record the distances.

Dots Time 1 Time 2 Time 3 Time 4 Time 5

4cm 6cm 8cm 8.5cm 9m
Home to A

5cm 7cm 9cm 10cm 10.5cm

Home to B

7cm 9cm 10.5cm 11cm 12cm

Home to C

8cm 11cm 12cm 13.5cm 14cm

Home to D

4.5cm 6cm 6.5cm 8cm 9cm

Home to E