The sun

Fig 1: Enjoying the sunshine.

	The sun gives us heat and light. Without the sun there would be no weather. Some parts of the world are very hot and some parts are very cold. The hottest places in the world are near the equator. The coldest places are near the North and South Poles.
Fig 2: Temperature regions of the earth.

In hot places people wear loose clothes to keep cool. The clothes are often white because this reflects the heat of the sun.
	Fig 3: Two camels in a desert.

	Sunshine brings us lots of energy. Some people use this energy to heat and light their homes. This is called solar energy. One way of collecting this energy is to fix solar panels to the roof. These convert the sun’s rays into electricity.
Fig 4: Solar panels.

Energy from the sun heats up the air around us. You can measure the temperature of the air by using a thermometer. This tells you how hot or cold it is.
	Fig 5: Two penguins.

Things to do

Draw a picture showing the different kinds of things you could do on a sunny day.

Draw a picture of a sunny day.

Draw a large sun and write some sunny words inside it.

Lots of people go to the seaside on a sunny day. Which of these things would be useful on the beach and why?

Fig 6: Useful things on a beach

WARNING: Never look directly at the sun. 

REMEMBER : Always protect yourself by wearing a hat and sun cream when you are out in the sun.

For the record

Make a record of the temperature every day. Use this list of words to start you off.

• Hot
• Warm
• Cool
  
• Cold
  
• Freezing

Use a thermometer and record the temperature at the same time each day.

Did you know?

The speed of light in a vacuum is around 186,282 miles per second (or 670 million m.p.h!).

The sun is about 146 million km away from the earth.  Sunlight leaving the sun’s surface, takes around 8 minutes to reach the earth.  In contrast, light from the nearest star to earth, Proxima Centauri, takes 4.22 years to arrive.

The sun has a surface temperature of around 6,000 °C, but an inner core temperature of around 1,000,000 °C!  Although the sun appears to be coloured yellow, in fact it is white.  It appears yellow because of the way sunlight is scattered within the earth’s atmosphere.