Why is the Sun so hot?
I’m sure you’ve heard persons exclaim that the sun is so hot! You hear this quite a bit in the summer time. As expected, you hardly hear this repeated in places that experience cold winters. The sun is a star and gives us heat and light and believe it or not, that heat that comes from the sun is constant and does not change in its intensity. So the same amount of heat that the sun gives in January in Chicago is the same amount of heat that is given in July in Chicago! Yet we all know that the temperatures in Chicago are vastly different during those times of the year.
There are a few explanations for this but before we can do that, we need to understand the reasons why temperature differs from place to place and during various times of the year in the same place. To understand that, we need to look at a layer of gas that surrounds our planet called the atmosphere. This atmosphere is not uniform and you actually would agree with this when you think about it for a bit. I’m sure you remember feeling sticky and hot and at other times you feel dry and comfortable. The reason for that is that the atmosphere has changed a bit and you notice it! Some places receive rain while other places receive snow and even ice. All these things take place in our atmosphere.
So to appreciate how and why we feel hot and cold, we need to understand a few things about our atmosphere or the layer of gas around us. We will begin there next time we meet.
Dr. Keith Yearwood
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