Big Bang Webquest

Go to youtube and watch this video:

1. What did observations between 1912 and 1917 show?

2. What did Lemaitres propose the universe was doing?

3. What important discovery did Hubble and his assistant discover about galaxies?

4. What does that mean the universe is doing?

5. What does that mean the universe use to be?

6. By observing very distant objects, what can scientists do?

7. What was discovered in 1965?

8. Does the universe have a center?

9. How old do we think the universe is?

Beginning URL:

Questions:

Part 1: Expansion of the Universe

  1. Why did Einstein develop the “cosmological constant”?
  2. Which theory was the natural beginning of a Big Bang theory?
  3. Who showed that the universe was indeed expanding?
  4. According to the expansion law do the galaxies expand away from each other equally? Explain.

Part 2: The Abundance of Light Elements

  1. What is nucleosynthesis?
  2. What is Big Bang nucleosynthesis?
  3. What was the universe like immediately after the Big Bang started?
  4. How much of the universe’s ordinary matter is thought to be helium? Does Big Bang theory support this number?
  5. What is WMAP?
  6. Where do elements heavier than lithium come from?
  7. Where do elements heavier than iron come from?

Part 3: Cosmic Microwave Background Radiation

  1. What is CMB? Explain.
  2. Who predicted the existence of CMB?
  3. Who discovered CMB?
  4. Describe the CMB as it exists today.
  5. How old is the universe thought to be?
  6. What did the FIRAS experiment show?
  7. What event was thought to occur about 400,000 years after the Big Bang?
  8. What is the most striking characteristic of the CMB?
  9. The article mentions cosmology and cosmologists over and over again. What is cosmology?

Next URL: or search “Smithsonian Pigeons Big Bang”

Read the article to be able to answer these questions:

1. Who were the scientists involved?

2. What did they discover?

3. What did pigeons have to do with their discovery?

4. Where did they make their discoveries?

5. When did they make their discovery?

6. When did they win the Nobel Prize?

7. How did they make their discovery?

8. Why was this such an important discovery?

Last Step: Google search “Khan Academy 2.1 Big Bang Quiz”. Write down the five questions with the correct answers:

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