Mazy's Muddle: The full-air balloon

“Mazy, I believe you’ve been talking non-stop since the morning? Mona told me. So here is a good way to make you stop – help me blow all these balloons for the party,” he said and handed me a big box of balloons.

I was hurt, but what can you expect from pesky girls like Mona?! I blew a balloon angrily. It grew huge within seconds. I tied it off with a thread. After taking a deep breath, I blew into the second one. It grew fat and round, but was just half as big as the first one.

The balloons were all exactly the same size in their ‘un’blown stage. If the first one was full, the second one was half-full, right? Being a creative sort of person, I decided I would fill the third one such that its volume would be half that of the second one. “Full, half-full, and the third then would be half-of-half, that is, quarter-full, correct?” I asked my cousin.

“Mazy, you silly boy!” said my cousin. I was so hurt I could not see what was wrong with my balloon-fractions. Can you explain why he thought I was silly?

Out of the maze:

Each balloon when blown and tied is FULL of air. Whatever the size of a balloon, the air blown in will fill up the balloon, fully.  By the way, you can have a balloon half-filled with water… but the other half will be air!