Expanding Universe Experiment

I have to admit, I was not expecting this classic astronomy experiment to spur such amazing conversations about the infinite galaxies that make up the universe! But that is exactly why I love doing classic science with my kids – to ‘expand’ their minds (pun intended😜).

At one point my 7 year old asked if you could ever reach the end of outer space and my 10 year old started pondering time travel! It made me think that their generation will be tackling the possibilities of landing a person on another planet and quite possibly figuring out how to travel through time – their dear old mom’s lifelong dream!

What you need: a balloon and stars stickers

What you do:

• First blow up the balloon and stretch it out a bit
• Deflate the balloon and add star stickers
• Ask what will happen to the stickers when the balloon is inflated
• Blow up the balloon and observe!

What’s the science? As the balloon is inflated, it appears that the star stickers are moving away from each other while none of them are getting closer together! This is to demonstrate how all of the galaxies in the universe might also be getting farther away from each other. This phenomenon was observed in 1929 by Dr. Edwin Hubble and that the farther a galaxy was from Earth, the faster it was traveling away from us. 

It was important for us to lay the groundwork that the Milky Way galaxy was made up of our solar system along with comets, cosmic dusts, and stars. But there were countless other galaxies out there that make up the universe. That thought is even difficult for an adult to comprehend the infinite possibilities of space.

So we turned to this video to demonstrate what it would be like to zoom out from Earth.

And this video got us thinking of how small Earth really is in the grand scheme of things!

We hope you check out this classic experiment and get ready for some amazing conversations about space!