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Asked by 2cvenus to Amy, Karen, Sarah, Vijay, Will on 18 Jun 2012.
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Amy Birch answered on 18 Jun 2012:
Hi 2cvenus,
What people call the rays of the sun is the electromagnetic radiation that is emitted from the sun. This is made up of radiation such as infrared radiation, visible radiation and ultraviolet radiation. Visible radiation is what we see as sunlight. Radiation from the sun is the most important thing for life on earth! The sun heats the earth so it is not too cold to live, and plants use sunlight to make energy to grow. Without plants, we would have no food eat!
Humans also need some sunlight (particularly ultraviolet radiation) because our bodies use it to make vitamin D. Too little vitamin D can cause weak and damaged bones and has also been linked to depression.
Although we need some ultraviolet sunlight, too much can cause skin cancer which is why you should always use sunscreen when out in the sun! This protects our skin from the harmful ultraviolet radiation.
Hope this answers your question! 🙂
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Sarah Martin answered on 20 Jun 2012:
Hi 2cvenus!
The sun makes lots of different energies of electromagnetic waves, some visible and some not. Here’s a diagram of what we call the “solar spectrum” – that’s all the light that the sun emits, and how much of it there is!
You can see there’s ultraviolet light on the very left, coloured purple – that’s what gives us sunburn and can cause skin cancer if we don’t wear sunscreen on sunny days. Then there are all the colours of visible light, and then infrared light, which we can’t see, but we can feel as the warmth of sunlight.
These are harmless!The other thing we get from the sun is occasional particle showers of protons and electrons, also called solar wind, which cause the northern lights and can cause problems in out electricity networks and satellites! But they don’t cause diseases either.
🙂 Sarah
Comments
balletbecca commented on :
good question 🙂
2cvenus commented on :
thanks 🙂