I mean your average party balloon, when it’s completely deflated, it seems you have to put extra effort into getting it going. As soon as it starts inflating, you need less effort.
In: Physics
There is less surface area of a small balloon for the pressure of your breath to work against. So let’s say you can exhale 2 lb of pressure per square inch. When the balloon is small the inside of it might only measure three square inches. So that 6 lb of pressure trying to stretch the balloon.
Double the size of the balloon and now you are exerting 12 lb of pressure on 6 square inches.
Double it again to 12 square inches and you’re exerting 24 lb of pressure on the balloon.
You’re still only providing the 2 lb of pressure per square inch but the number of inches has grown a lot.
Then as the balloon becomes nearly full, the total number of pounds of force it takes for the balloon to expand another inch starts steadily rising. This is sort of like a spring, but it’s at the molecular rubber level of spring. Literally the springiness of the rubber.
So then as you get to the maximum expansion of the balloon it may not be able to expand any further. Now you have to provide enough air to pop the balloon or you have to stop blowing.
So the easiest point in the inflation is when there’s plenty of surface area inside the balloon for the breath of your longest depressed against, but there’s still plenty of balloon stretchiness left so it’s still easy for the balloon to get bigger.
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