The Sun

The sun is some very amazing evidence of God's creation. We started our unit on the sun. We had to compare to scale the size of the earth to the size of the sun. I had no idea how big the sun really is. The demonstration we did was use a basketball for the sun and a peppercorn for the earth. Then we got to go test the power of the sun. We went outside with a magnifying glass and some chocolate candy bars. The goal was simply to melt the chocolate by concentrating the power of the sun through the magnifying glass. We concentrated the sun a bit, and the chocolate started to melt. We concentrated a bit more, and it started to bubble. Then, we actually managed to light the chocolate on fire. No, they were not big roaring flames, but there was smoke and little bitty flame. The boys thought that was absolutely cool. Of course, that opened up a whole can of worms to try to find other things to light on fire. Not going to happen. The magnifying glass should be used under close supervision at all times.

As I was reading ahead in the book a bit. I also learned that the sun is growing brighter and hotter each year. At the rate of increase, if you were to go back billions or even millions of years, life on earth would not have been possible. The sun would have been too dim and cold. Things that make you go hmmmm. It also does give some credence to the theory of global warming, but not in the way it is portrayed by the media.