Rebel Star: The Sun's Greatest Mysteries

The Sun is many things: beauty, beacon, battery, belligerent. It’s the biggest thing for light-years around and yet we actually know relatively little about it.

That’s changing thanks to an armada of new spacecraft recently lofted into the solar system to scrutinise the Sun in unprecedented detail. In a talk packed full of jaw-dropping images and videos, I’ll be your guide on a journey deep into the heart of our nearest star.

It’s the perfect way to reinforce many aspects of the physics curriculum.

CURRICULUM POINTS COVERED 

Heating and thermal equilibrium

Non-contact forces: gravity forces acting at a distance on Earth

Atmospheric pressure

Opposing forces and equilibrium

Sound waves; energy and waves; light waves

Electricity and magnetism

Energy in matter

Our Sun as a star, other stars in our galaxy

Atomic structure

Transformers and the National Grid

Ionisation; absorption or emission of radiation related to changes in electron orbits

Nuclear fusion and our Sun’s energy

Constituents of the atom

Stable and unstable nuclei

Particles, antiparticles & photons

Energy levels, line spectra & photon emission

Wave-particle duality

Longitudinal (pressure) waves

Conservation of energy

Moving charges in a magnetic field

Radioactive decay

Mass, energy & nuclear fusion

I-R, U-V and X-ray telescopes Black-body radiation (Stefan's Law)

The use of stellar spectral classes

The life cycle of stars The Hertzsprung-Russell (HR) diagram

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