
In many places, Arizona in my experience, it is possible to cook an egg on the sidewalk in the summer in a matter of minutes. We are 92,955,820.5 miles, or 1 Astronomical unit, away from the sun (on average). So using simple mathematics the surface of the sun is hot enough to cook almost 93 million eggs in just a manner of minutes.
The simple mathematics employed above neglects the fact that the sun is a point source of radiating energy. This means that the the intensity decreases with the square of distance. So, we can either square the number of eggs, or take the square root of the time required.
So, if it takes 4 minutes in Arizona, it would only take 2 minutes to cook all 93 million eggs at the surface of the sun. The other choice would be to use a bigger egg, like an ostrich egg. Then it would still take all 4 minutes.
Friday, February 23, 2007
How hot is the sun?
Labels:
eggs,
other stuff,
Sun
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