2 Energy from the Sun

The Sun supplies the Earth with energy: radiation streams out at 385 trillion trillion W (385 followed by 24 zeros!). But as the Earth is 150 million km from the Sun (on average), it intercepts only a tiny fraction of this energy.

It’s like a garden sprinkler or fountain. A large flow of water is supplied to spray out in every direction, but each of the surrounding plants – or, in the case of the photograph of the unusual fountain in Figure 1, birds – receives only a small part.

Figure 1 Birds in the spray of the spherical El Alamein Fountain in Sydney.

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This photograph shows the El Alamein Fountain, which has a number of water fountains pointing outwards from one point in all directions, so it is effectively a sphere of nozzles spraying water in all directions.

Figure 1 Birds in the spray of the spherical El Alamein Fountain in Sydney.