I was watching a Brian Cox video and he mentioned Herschel figured out the sun’s energy output. Why did his calculations work? I understand he heated a bowl of water 1 degree C and somehow was able to calculate how much energy the sun produces by that, but I need a better explanation.
In: Physics
I’m not sure exactly how this specific case was done. But the energy it takes to heat water by 1⁰C is very well know, it’s the definition of a calorie.
If you have a known mass of water and you put it out into the sun and it heats up by some temperature, you know how much energy the water must have received. If you measure the time it took to heat, you know how much power it received. If you know how large the surface area of the water that is exposed to the sun, then you know how much power is outputted per unit area at Earth’s distance from the Sun. Knowing the distance, you can calculate the surface area of a sphere around the Sun with that radius. Since you know now the power output per unit area, you can multiply by that area and calculate the total power output.
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