View transcript
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(lively music)

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- Hi, welcome to "Storytime
Science" at the Exploratorium.

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My name is Viv, and today's
episode is "The Sun".

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We're gonna be reading this
book, written by the Sun,

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with the help of Stacy McAnulty,

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and the pictures are by Stevie Lewis.

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So let's get reading.

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(lively music)

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About 4.6 billion years ago,

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a magnificent and important star was born.

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And that magnificent and
important star was me,

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your Sun, with a capital S.

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Yes, I am a star.

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Oh, Sun has a dictionary.

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Star, a massive and luminous ball of gas,

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full of energy.

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And another definition for the word star,

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is an outstandingly, talented
and popular performer.

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I fit both definitions.

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The Milky Way Galaxy has over
one hundred billion stars.

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That makes me, one in a billion.

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Or one in one-hundred billion.

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I'm not the biggest, so what.

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Not the brightest, who cares?

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Not the oldest, whatever.

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But I am the most important,

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at least to you Earthlings.

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Can you hang out for eight minutes?

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That's how long it takes my
light to reach the earth.

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Yep, I give you heat and light.

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You're welcome.

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I'm so important that
Earthlings should name

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a special day in my honor.

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We could call it, Sunday...oh wait.

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We already have a Sunday.

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I'm famous for my heat and light,

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but I also hold our entire
solar system together.

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Scientists call it gravity.

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What can I say?

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The planets are attracted to me.

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And because I'm the center
of our solar system,

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life revolves around me, literally.

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And there, all the planets,

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Neptune, Saturn, Jupiter, Uranus, Mars,

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Mercury, Venus, the Earth,

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(gasp) look they all go
in the same direction.

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And some interesting
stuff on this page, too.

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An Earth year is 365 days.

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A year on Venus would
be only 225 Earth days,

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whereas a year on Neptune
would be 60,190 Earth days.

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That's because they're all different

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distances from the Sun.

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So when they're going around
the Sun it takes shorter,

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or it takes longer than the Earth.

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Those other stars are
far, far away from Earth.

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Which makes them look teeny,
tiny, and not so important.

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I'm close, a mere 93
million miles from Earth.

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To an Earthling, I look like this.

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But to Neptunians, I'm
2,795 million miles away,

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and I look like this, if
there were Neptunians.

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There's no known life on Neptune.

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Technically, I'm a yellow dwarf star.

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Oh look, the Sun's ID card.

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But I'm still a big, big deal.

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If I were the size of a basketball,

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Earth would be smaller
than a grain of sand.

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You could fit about one
million Earths inside me.

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But you can't fill me with Earths,

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because I'm hot stuff, compare.

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A hot summer day, 90 degrees Fahrenheit.

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A pizza oven, 700 degrees Fahrenheit.

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The orange-yellow flames in a campfire,

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about two thousand degrees Fahrenheit.

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Me, at my center, 27
million degrees Fahrenheit,

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but only about 10 thousand
degrees Fahrenheit

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on the surface.

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I can melt diamonds.

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Ancient Earthlings thought
I circled the Earth.

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Can you imagine me revolving around Earth?

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(chuckles)

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And some might think that I sit

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in the sky all day and all night,

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but I got moves, baby, I'm spinning.

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And because I'm not solid,

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my middle moves faster
than my top and my bottom.

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Takes about 25 Earth days to
rotate the middle of the Sun,

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and about 36 Earth days to rotate

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at the top and the bottom of the Sun.

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Don't try this at home!

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I'm not only important, I'm
generous and good-looking.

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Sunrises, sunsets, northern
lights, southern lights,

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sit back and enjoy the show.

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Sometimes I like to be mysterious,

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and sneak away for a few minutes.

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Solar eclipse.

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But don't worry, I'm just behind the moon.

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While I'm astronomically
bigger than the moon,

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400 times wider,

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the moon is astronomically
closer to Earth,

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almost 600 times closer.

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My neighbor stars have fancy names.

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Meet Proxima Centauri, Alpha Centauri A,

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and Alpha Centauri B.

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Me, I just need three letters.

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Give me an S, give me a U, give me an N!

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What's that spell?

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Sun!

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Sun, Sun, he's our star,
light and heat from afar.

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Please note, that's a
capital S, I am important.

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Not to hog the spotlight,
but I've still got it.

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I'm the same hot, bright
star I've always been.

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Oh, headlines.

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Some stars fall apart.

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There might be a meltdown.

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A total collapse.

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But in the "Milky Way Herald",

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"A stable star is a good star.

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"You don't want your Sun
getting hotter or cooling off.

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"that would be really messy."

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So grab your shades,

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I plan to be in the biz for
another six billion years.

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You and me, we got a
bright future together.

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Here we have a fact page at the end.

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(Gasp)

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There's a Q&A with the
star of our book, Sun.

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Let me go ahead and read that,

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that's question and answer.

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So the question is, who
is your favorite planet?

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And remember, this book will
be read mostly by Earthlings.

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Of course, I don't have a favorite.

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Each is special, and kind of puny.

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By mass, I make up 99.8%
of the entire solar system.

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That's like asking a human to
select a favorite fingernail.

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Question, you've been around
nearly 4.6 billion years

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and are expected to shine at
least another six billion more.

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How do you stay so enthusiastic?

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Well, I like to keep moving.

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As you read, I rotate,

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but also about every 11 years,

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my poles change magnetic polarity.

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That means the top and
the bottom of the Sun.

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Positive becomes negative,
and negative becomes positive.

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This causes impressive solar storms.

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I also orbit the Milky Way,

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taking Earth and all my planets with me.

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That's a long trip.

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About 230 million years.

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Question, from the outside,

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you look like a giant, fiery ball.

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But what are you really made of?

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Well mostly, hydrogen, and some helium.

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Question, when young Earth
artists draw you in a picture,

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what color do you prefer?

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Technically, I'm a yellow dwarf.

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From space, with no atmosphere in the way,

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I'm basically white.

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But without me, Earthlings
wouldn't see any colors,

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it would be too dark.

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So use any crayon, I don't mind.

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I would recommend adding
glitter to any picture,

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to capture my sparkling personality.

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Question, last question, do you
have any advice for readers?

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Yes, never stare directly at me,

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even during a solar eclipse.

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Because I can damage your eyes.

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You delicate Earthlings can't
handle my ultraviolet rays.

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Also, eat your vegetables,
I help grow them.

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(upbeat music)

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It's time for our Sun activity.

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Now, you don't ever wanna
look directly at the Sun,

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just like the Sun said in the Q&A,

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in the question and answer
at the end of the book.

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But you do wanna observe the Sun,

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so we're gonna make a tool

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that lets you observe the Sun.

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What we're going to make, is a snowflake.

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It's not a snowflake made out of snow,

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because that would melt.

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It's gonna be a snowflake
made out of paper,

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and maybe you've made one
of these before, okay?

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It's a fold and cut activity.

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We want it to be symmetrical,

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we want it to be radially symmetrical.

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That means, it's like a sunburst

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coming from the center of the pattern.

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The first thing you wanna do,

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is take a sheet of paper,

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this is a regular eight and
a half by 11 sheet of paper.

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You could use a smaller sheet of paper.

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You could probably only also use

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a little sheet of paper like this.

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Anyway, I'm gonna fold it in half.

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I'm gonna try and be as neat as possible

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with my folding, make a nice fold.

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So I fold in half this way.

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Now I'm gonna fold in
in half this way, okay.

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And now, just, you can
start cutting it there,

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but I'm gonna put an extra fold in it.

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I'm gonna fold it, and then angle,

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I'm gonna have that be my point.

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And I'm going to fold it like this,

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fold it over,

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and make a nice, good crease on it.

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Now I'm ready to cut.

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The whole idea with these,

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and you can see in the
ones that I already made,

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is that, well except for

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kind of sort of in the middle of this one,

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none of the shapes that I've cut

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into my snowflake are round.

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We want all sorts of
different kind of angular

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and squared-off shapes.

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So, I have a pair of scissors,

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I'm gonna start in the very center.

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And instead of just
cutting it straight across,

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I'm gonna cut sort of kind of
weird angularly thing here.

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Okay, good.

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And now I'm gonna go
along this big fold here,

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and I'm gonna slice into
it with the scissors.

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Okay, so for example right there,

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that is most definitely
not a circle, okay?

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And let me make another
couple of them here.

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Like diamond shapes, or
even like squiggly shapes.

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And just in case, I also
have a couple of hole punches

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that are not circular hole punches.

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I have one hole punch
that's the shape of a star.

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I'm gonna punch a couple of stars in here.

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Let me get it the right
way around, okay good.

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So, oh, (clicking) have to be strong.

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So you can see that one is a star shape.

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Let me do another star shape,
just to test my strength.

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(clicking)

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I wonder if I can, oh,

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I have an actual snowflake shape on this.

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Let me see if this will go through a bunch

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of different folds of the paper.

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Oh, not strong enough.

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Oh well, I'll do another
one with the star.

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(clicking)

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Now when I unfold this,

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it's gonna be a nice
symmetrical snowflake shape,

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with lots of stars.

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What you wanna now do,

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is make sure you totally
flatten out that piece of paper.

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Now this is a tool for
observing the shape of the Sun,

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without actually looking at the Sun.

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So, if you take this
outside on a Sunny day,

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you wanna make sure it's not
a really cloudy or foggy day.

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The Sun has to be shining nice and bright,

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and you hold this really
close to the ground,

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or really close to a wall,

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you can see the shapes that
you've cut out or punched out.

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But as you move, this sheet of
paper further and further up

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and away from the ground,

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or further and further away from the wall,

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you'll see if these shapes still look like

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the nice, sharp non-round
shapes that they are.

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You might notice that
the start to round out

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a little bit at the edges.

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And if you hold it up far
enough away from the ground,

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or far enough away from the wall,

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then you might notice that
you have a bunch of circles.

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You don't have the shapes
that you actually cut in.

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They will all look like circles.

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That's because no matter
what shape of hole you make,

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the shape of the light through
each of these little holes,

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is always going to be the shape
of the source of the light,

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in this case, the Sun.

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So, what's pretty cool is,

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if you don't happen to have
your sheet of paper with you,

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and you're out for a walk,

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you can notice if there are
trees with lots of branches,

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and you notice the shapes
between all the branches

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and the leaves are not circles,

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but you look down on the ground,

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sometimes it just looks like
a lot of overlapping circles.

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The other thing that you can do,

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is you can just do the same sort of thing

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with your hands.

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If you just crisscross your
fingers over each other,

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you can see none of those
are circular shapes.

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There's a square, there's a trapezoid,

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there's a rectangle, there's
kind of almost a triangle.

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And you can do the same thing.

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You could put your hands
close to the ground,

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again, on a really sunny day,

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and keep lifting them higher,
and higher, and higher,

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or say, you're in your kitchen,

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like I was in my kitchen the other day,

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and the sunlight is
coming through a window,

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really, really brightly,

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and you have your snowflake or
your hands against the wall,

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and you could see the light
coming through those shapes,

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and you move it slowly,
slowly away from there,

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you'll see those shapes start to round out

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until they're all shapes of the Sun.

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There's somebody who works here

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at the Exploratorium with me,

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who, we used to always talk about this,

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if the Sun were shaped like a chicken,

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all those little shapes of
light that you would see,

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if you pulled far enough back,

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would all be shaped like a chicken.

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But the Sun's round,

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so this is a really good observation tool.

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And also, if you go on
the Exploratorium website,

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and you look up Bob Millers' light walk,

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he explains a whole lot
about how Sun images work.

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And how things like this work,

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it's a really, really
cool part of our website,

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Bob Miller was an artist who
worked here for almost 20 years

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And Bob Miller's light
walk is a great place to go

[00:18:41.01]
to learn more about the
Sun, and images of the Sun.

[00:18:44.06]
(lively music)

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So we've read the book, and
we've done the activity.

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I wanted a little something extra.

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So, I looked up poems about the Sun.

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And I found this one.

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It's called, "A Pizza
the Size of the Sun".

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And it's by Jack Perlutsky.

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"I'm making a pizza the size of the Sun.

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"A pizza that's sure to
weigh more than a ton.

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"A pizza too massive to pick up and toss.

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"A pizza resplendent with oceans of sauce.

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"I'm topping my pizza
with mountains of cheese.

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"With acres of peppers,
pimentos, and peas.

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"With mushrooms, tomatoes,
and sausage galore.

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"With every last olive
they had at the store.

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"My pizza is sure to be one of a kind.

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"My pizza will leave other pizzas behind.

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"My pizza will be a delectable treat

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"that all who love pizza
are welcome to eat.

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"The oven is hot, I believe it will take

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"a year and a half for my pizza to bake.

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"I hardly can wake until my pizza is done.

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"My wonderful pizza, the size of the Sun."

[00:20:19.07]
(lively music)

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