Sun Up, Sun Down

  • 15 hours ago
by Gail Gibbons
Transcript
00:00Sun Up, Sun Down, by Gail Gibbons, for Florence Alexander.
00:16For his help, special thanks to Michael Herrimans of the Chelsea School, Vermont.
00:21The sun wakes me up.
00:22It rises in the east and shines through my window.
00:25It lights up my room and makes patterns on my floor.
00:28Its brightness colors the clouds and the sky, but the sun itself is too bright to
00:32look at.
00:33It could hurt my eyes.
00:35I go down to breakfast.
00:36My cereal is made of wheat.
00:38My dad tells me the sun made the wheat grow.
00:41He says the sun gives power and energy to make plants and trees grow big and tall.
00:46It is summer.
00:47Because it is hot, I don't need to wear a coat or sweater today.
00:50The sun is high in the sky and the days are long.
00:53When the sun is low in the sky, the days are shorter.
00:56It is winter and it is cold.
00:58That is when I need my coat hat and mittens.
01:01But on a summer morning like this, I see my shadow on the ground.
01:04The sun is behind me in the east.
01:07When I move, my shadow moves too.
01:09It points west.
01:10By noontime, the sun is shining right above me.
01:13My shadow is gone.
01:15It is a hot time of day, and I am glad when my mother calls me inside for lunch.
01:19While I'm eating, I ask my parents a question.
01:22How far away is the sun?
01:24My mother tells me it is very far away, 93 millions miles from our planet earth.
01:30She says it is a very big star.
01:32It looks bigger than the other stars because it is closer to us.
01:35My dad says the sun is a ball of very hot glowing gases.
01:39It keeps our planet warm.
01:41He says our earth would be dark and very cold if there were no sun.
01:44It would also be empty.
01:46Nothing could live on it.
01:47After lunch I go outside.
01:49My shadow is back again, but now it points east.
01:52The sun is moving west behind me.
01:55Suddenly big clouds begin to cover the sun.
01:57My shadow is gone again.
01:59Over in the valley, the sun peeks through the clouds making shadows on the ground.
02:03More clouds come.
02:05They are gray and black.
02:06It becomes dark.
02:07A raindrop hits my nose and I run home.
02:10I hear the rain on the roof of my house.
02:13My dad says the sun helps make rain so that we can have fresh water to drink and so that
02:17plants and trees can grow.
02:19He tells me that when the sun shines on our oceans lakes and rivers it warms the water.
02:24Some of the water turns into vapor and rises high into the sky.
02:28The cooler air up in the sky turns the vapor into tiny raindrops.
02:32Clouds are formed.
02:33The raindrops float higher up into colder air.
02:36They become bigger and bigger.
02:38Finally, when the drops are heavy and big enough, the drops fall and it rains.
02:43Soon the storm clouds begin to drift away, although it is still sprinkling.
02:47The sun appears once again and shines through the raindrops.
02:50I see a beautiful rainbow.
02:52My mom says the light of the sun shining through the raindrops makes the rainbow.
02:56She tells me the sun I'll get looks white but it really isn't.
03:00It is made up of many colors.
03:02When a beam of light shines through a glass triangle called a prism, the beam of light
03:06is bent.
03:07Soon the rays of the beam bend more than others separating the light into different colors.
03:12The drops of water are like the prism.
03:14When sunbeams shine through the raindrops what we see is a rainbow.
03:18When I go outside, my shadow is long and skinny.
03:21The sun is setting in the western sky.
03:23It is getting cool outside.
03:25The sun is leaving for today and the sky is getting dark.
03:28My dad tells me the sun will shine on the other side of our planet while I'm asleep.
03:32He says the earth spins round and round and makes a complete turn once every 24 hours.
03:38When our part of the earth faces the sun it is day.
03:41When it is turned away from the sun, it is night.
03:43It is night now.
03:44The sun is down.
03:46The sky is dark.
03:47It is time to sleep.
03:49Some sunny facts.
03:50The sun is 400 times farther away from the earth than the moon.
03:54If our sun were hollow, it could hold 1 million of our earths.
03:58Every once in a while, the moon passes between the sun and the earth.
04:02Such as event is called a solar eclipse.
04:04Our sun is nearly 5 billions years old.
04:07Some people use the sun's energy to heat their water and their homies.
04:11The world's largest solar power plant is in the Mojave Desert in California.