You are having a family holiday dinner with your extended family: grandparents, aunts, uncles, cousins, etc. The conversation turns to your studies in physics, and you tell everyone about your studies about fusion reactions in the Sun. One of your nephews says, “Oh, yeah? I think the Sun is just a big ball of gasoline burning away. How can you prove that that isn’t true?” (a) Based on the fact that gasoline delivers about 1.3 x 10^8 J of energy for each gallon burned, perform a calculation that will show your nephew how long the Sun would last if it were made of gasoline. (b) Perform a calculation to show your nephew that nuclear fusion of all the hydrogen in the Sun could last a lot longer.

You are having a family holiday dinner with your extended family: grandparents, aunts, uncles, cousins, etc. The conversation turns to your studies in physics, and you tell everyone about your studies about fusion reactions in the Sun. One of your nephews says, “Oh, yeah? I think the Sun is just a big ball of gasoline burning away. How can you prove that that isn’t true?” (a) Based on the fact that gasoline delivers about 1.3 x 10^8 J of energy for each gallon burned, perform a calculation that will show your nephew how long the Sun would last if it were made of gasoline. (b) Perform a calculation to show your nephew that nuclear fusion of all the hydrogen in the Sun could last a lot longer.