Where Does The Sun Get Its Energy?
Ux33-5k8cjg • 2012-05-06
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Language: en
[Applause]
it's another beautiful day in Sydney I'm
out enjoying the Sun and looking to find
out if anyone knows why the sun shines
so the sun gives us a lot of heat yeah
Sunshine provides energy life really
where does the Sun get that energy
from I have no idea I have no idea some
kind of chemical reaction
M yeah gas explosions doesn't it burn
gas the burning of gases it's burning up
fire the fire that's on the
[Music]
Sun but is the sun really a giant ball
of fire I mean wouldn't it go out after
5 billion years it's one of those things
that you just assume you know but then
you don't actually know so in this
bucket I have the components of the sun
well I have uh protons and neutrons
there's some electrons but I didn't
bring them okay most of the sun is
actually protons okay and so what do the
protons do in the
sun it dance
together okay when they come close you
know what they do they just well
actually they they bounce off each other
I'm coming in
who oh why do the protons bounce off
each other something to do with
electrons positive negative electrons
cuz it don't like each they don't like
each other what it is that's because a
proton needs a neutron right do you know
why they they repel like that magnetic
force the repelling magnet type thing
magnet field uh electric field positiv
negative positive and negative it's to
do with the positive negative right we
got protons protons
are charg yeah so the posi are probably
this is why it's so important that the
sun's hot cuz if the Sun is hot enough
it gets these things moving so fast that
sometimes they can't avoid a collision
okay and when they get too close they
actually
go and explosion goes everywhere
wow all
[Music]
right smash the protons yeah yeah yeah
yeah yeah no no no SM oh and now they're
stuck together and you saw what happened
when they smashed together
what happened they
leaked is that energy yeah sick well the
water poured out but I guess energy
would have C out the energy came out the
energy came out what was the energy
before it was energy kinetic energy
stored
energy so what's happening there it's
releasing some mass by colliding and
that mass is uh it's converted into
energy it was the mass of the
proton
when the protons smashed together they
got lighter yeah and they lost that mass
and the mass was converted to energy you
know a famous equation about
that yeah eal
mc² have you heard that famous
equation which Pro PR makes energy
well eal mc² yes so what's
E the sun I don't know e e is energy um
m is Mass
C is Cy cin I don't remember what c
means so C
is the speed of light speed of light no
right really yeah Oh I thought it was
isn't that weird the speed of light
right
ah wow no wonder we drop SIDS it seems
most people have a tough time
remembering that C is for the speed of
light maybe that's because C is a bit of
a strange letter to represent a speed in
fact in Einstein's original paper he
used used the letter V for velocity of
light but nowadays everyone uses the
letter c for constant it's a constant of
the universe the speed of light though
some people claim the letter C stands
for karatas the Latin word for swiftness
what is that equation telling us about
energy and
mass energy equals constant mass the
mass and the
energy combined together creat the
energy it's B basically saying like this
mass that comes out yeah gets converted
to a lot of energy and the speed of
light is a huge number yeah you think
about that tiny bit of mass is a huge
amount of energy so every second the sun
is actually losing 4.3 billion
kgs every second that amount of mass is
being converted into energy in the sun
hydrogen infuses together to form helium
but that's a little confusing because
how out of only protons do we create a
helium nucleus which has two protons and
two neutrons well the thing is when the
first two smash
together one of the protons actually
emits a positron and a neutrino and
quickly becomes a neutron next thing
that happens is another proton Smashes
in and again we get more energy released
now if two particles like this
Collide they emit two protons and what
we're left with
is the helium 4 nucleus there you have
hydrogen fused into helium and a lot of
mass lost a lot of energy
[Music]
released if you want to know more about
Fusion in the sun check out this video
by minute physics it explains how the
protons can fuse even though they're not
really going fast enough to overcome
their repulsion Fusion will fuse
together anyway and the Sun is so big
and has so much hydrogen that these
small chances happen all the time
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file updated 2026-02-13 13:07:50 UTC
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