Green Living by Janet Marchant: Solar Power Comes from the Sun

Did you know that the sun is a source of clean energy? That's right! Plants, like your Kentucky bluegrass, use the energy to photosynthesize, and there are all kinds of other uses for solar. Scientists have found that the sun is a huge atom-smashing machine. The heat and light of the sun come from the nuclear reactions of hydrogen, carbon, nitrogen, and helium. I know, it sounds kind of dangerous, but the sun is really far away—about 93 million miles away!—so we don't have to worry about it. If it were in our back yards, that would be another story!

You may think your attic gets hot in the summer, but believe it or not, the sun is much hotter. It is so hot that everything on it is a gas: iron, copper, aluminum, and many others. The next time you're feeling blue because, after too many of those organic free-range fried chicken T.V. dinners, you just can't seem to squeeze into that pair of jeans that used to fit you so well, you might want to think about how much bigger the sun is. If the sun were hollow, a million earths could fit inside…and yet the sun is only a middle-sized star. That kind of perspective really makes you, your problems, and your posterior seem just a little bit smaller, doesn't it?