How many of you have seen this public service announcement (PSA) (I believe it would be shown in the US, only):

A 4 or 5-year old girl is sitting with her father outside on a bench (in the park?). The little girl asks her father, "daddy, why is the sun yellow"? The father answers, "to make your hair shine bright and pretty"?

[NOTE: I am doing this from last weeks memory so I am probably not remembering the question or dialogue correctly]

Anyway... the little girl comes back with, "that's not what mommy says", and goes into a fairly detailed physics explanation of light scattering, etc. etc. to the shock of daddy and the audience.

Then the announcer announces over the static word-board something about teaching our young girls math and science. That if they don't start to get it at this age, they probably won't later, etc. etc.

Cute commercial. Has anyone seen it, and if they have are the explanations of the [correct] initial question correct?

I would think the producers of the PSA would have done their research.

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The sun is yellow?

No, but it appears yellow.

My theory is that it appears yellow due to the atmosphere scattering away some of the blue light.

White light - Blue light = Yellow light

That being said, I wonder if astronauts see a more white sun.

Naked eye?

Are you looking through a lot of smog?

It looks white to me. At least when it is overhead. At sunrise or sunset it can appear to be other colors.

I thought the sun was considered a yellow dwarf star and that it just appears more white to us b/c it overloads our visual receptors b/c of the intensity.

Just ask Superman.

The ad description made me think of a Calvin & Hobbes strip- one of the ones where the dad would unload a pile of malarkey on Calvin.

When Calvin complains "that's not what mom said", dad replies, "Well, we men are better at abstract thought. Go and tell her that."

This has been discussed before here:

http://www.badastronomy.com/phpBB/vi...3&start=25

I still say the sun does not look yellow to me. If it did, then a white piece of paper held in sunlight would look yellow, no?

I have not seen that commercial, but a similar one (probably the same series), where the little girl ask her dad "why is the sky blue", dad:"to match your pretty eyes" her:"that's not what mom says, she says..." and then she launch into what sounds like a good explination about how blue light is scattered.

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Prediction is very difficult, especially about the future.

--Niels Bohr, Danish Physicist.

I think that's the one -- "why is the sky blue". I hadn't seen it for several days before posting, nor have I seen it since I posting this thread, but I think you are correct.

In any case, my question still stands -- did the writers of the PSA get their facts straight?

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