Space, you say?

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This is basically what I said in the Random Babbling Post. Essentially, I need to write a short essay, detailing the ways in which we have discovered various aspects of the sun. However, the essay is not to contain any graphs or formulae, and it is supposed to be explained using everyday examples and analogies. Unfortunately, there are many, many books and websites that can tell you these things, however, all of them that I have so far come accross have been using assorted physical and mathematical ideas. Does anyone have any clues as to what I should say?

 

the sun gives light and heat?

 

Ah, but how do we know how much light, how much heat, how far away it is, and so forth? That is the question.

 

It is not so difficult. Instead of using numbers, just make some comparisions with some more familiar quantities.

So, for example, instead of saying that the distance from sun to earth is 100 million miles, you could say that the sun is 300 times farther away than the moon (the numbers are not exact, you have to work them out by yourself). Or you could say that light needs 7 minutes to travel from the sun to Earth. You presumably can also talk about how this distance was first measured.

It is not very clear form your post though if you paper should concern the historical aspects or the physical properties of the sun.

In terms of heat given by the sun: if you find out how much energy it radiates in 24 hours, then you can try to figure out how much water you can boil with. Again, let's say the Sun radiates 100 mil Kcal per 24 hours; and you need 1Kcal to boil one liter of water; then with the Sun energy output in one day, you can boil 100 mil liters of water, or about the whole lake Ontario (again, numbers pulled out of a hat)..

 

Sorry if the post isn't terribly clear. What I have to do is show how we know these things, so it is really the historical physics I have to show, what early astronomers used to discover these things, without actually using much physics.

The question that needs to be answered is that, given that we know many things about the Sun - how big it is, how far away it is, how hot it is, how bright it really is, and so on, but since we have no actual contact with it, how do we know these things?

 

Well, then you need to research these specific things on the Web. Maybe a good starting point would be this. Apparently, Aristarchus of Samos was the first one who tried to estimate the diameter and distance to the Sun (he was off by about a factor of 10, though). Then the 16 century astronomers made the first accurate measurements (the invention of telescope might have something to do with it).

 

This may not be what you're looking for but I've always found that Space Weather has always been an interesting astronomy website.

 

The people you need to look for are of the ancient Greeks Aristarchus and possibly Anaximandes, Heraclitus and Pythagoras. Moving to the middle ages you need Galileo, Copernicus and then move to Tycho Brahe, Edmund Halley and the man that first put everything into focus Isaac Newton. I'm sure you won't need to go further than that, if you do pm me and I'll give the names of further Physicists to look at.

[ October 26, 2005, 15:44: Message edited by: DarkStrider ]

 

Right, that was very handy, thank you. Now I need to know about the elements of the Sun, what was the first thing or person to find them, and how they did it. I also need to find out some things about it's brightness, and how it can be measured.

 

Essentially Hydrogen to Helium though there may be a bit of carbon but it won't start it's carbon cycle for quite some time.

If you follow this Spectral Analysis that should start you on how it was discovered, used with regards to stellar phenomena