What did you do in this lab?
In this lab we blew up a balloon slightly and drew dot’s on it, then we measured the distances between the dot’s. Then we would then blow up the balloon to half of its size and measure the distances once again, then finally we blew up the balloon as large as we could and measured the distance of the dot’s one last time. We did this to show how the distance between the galaxies get farther apart.
What did the balloon and dots represent?
During this lab the balloon was used to represent the universe whereas the dot’s were used to represent the different galaxies.
What was the trend in your expansion distance?
These are the expansion differences we found:
- A – 1.6
- B – 3.4
- C – 3.1
- D – 7
- E – 5
To find the expansion difference you subtract the data from the barely inflated balloon from that of the fully inflated balloon. When we were analyzing these numbers we couldn’t find the “trend” or anything that they had in common with one another.
What is your opinion on the value of the activity? What are some things your still curious about?
I liked this astronomy lab because it showed how the galaxies move apart from one another in a simple way to understand. What I would like to know is does the universe have an ending point or does it not have an end?