Damaris Ulloa Marquez

Professor Bocchino

Writing 2

1 May 2024

The Sun Through The Lenses Of Two Academic Disciplines

4.6 billion years ago our Sun was created. Our entire solar system revolves around the

existence of our sun, and so do our lives. The topic of the sun has been discussed throughout

numerous academic disciplines. How does the sun affect our lives? What is it made of? There are

so many unknowns and questions regarding the sun and its existence. Although they are both

scientific, the field of astronomy and medicine are quite distinct in their jargon, audience, and

evidence in their academic writing, but are organized similarly. While analyzing these two

disciplines’ conventions of writing, we were able to see the difference in their implications.

Through astronomy, we can learn the Sun’s genetic makeup. Meanwhile, medicine shows us

possible new ways to prevent melanoma through a SunSmart curriculum.

In the article “Friendship networks and sun safety behavior among children,” a study is

conducted where children learn through their more popular friends, or Peer Leaders, to spread

safe sun behaviors in order to lower their risk of melanoma in the future.1 It is conducting its

study through everyday social interactions between children. They argue that “the friendship

networks and sun safety behaviors for a group of fourth and fifth-grade students [is] part [of] a

larger sun safety intervention.”2 Through this article, the authors chose to focus on a social

method of preventing skin cancer instead of a scientific one. This is different from the main goal
1 Jennifer Tsai, Thomas W. Valente, Kimberly A. Miller, Kayla de la Haye, Trevor A. Pickering, and Myles
G. Cockburn. “Friendship Networks and Sun Safety Behavior among Children.” Network science
(Cambridge University Press) 4, no. 3 (2016): 314.
2 Jennifer Tsai, Thomas W. Valente, Kimberly A. Miller, Kayla de la Haye, Trevor A. Pickering, and Myles
G. Cockburn. “Friendship Networks and Sun Safety Behavior among Children.” Network science
(Cambridge University Press) 4, no. 3 (2016): 314.
 Ulloa 2

the discipline of medicine has, which is to cure people. Through their writing, the authors are

using social norms to convey a way of preventative medicine.

Through the lens of astronomy, the article “The Chemical Make-up of the Sun: A 2020

Vision” shows us a new way to analyze “the solar abundances of all 83 long-lived elements,

using highly realistic solar modeling and state-of-the-art spectroscopic analysis techniques

coupled with the best available atomic data and observations.”3 They are challenging the process

of how the sun’s chemical make-up was composed in the past, emphasizing that the two methods

used are centuries old. By stating that the methods are centuries old, they bring up the point of a

need to have a new, more accurate method of discovering what makes up the sun. They also

accomplished this by stating all of the new elements now discovered, which don't align with

previous assumptions. By emphasizing the uncertainties and possible flaws, they are introducing

the purpose of the research.

The audience for the astronomy article is other experts in their field. We can see this

through the article because their jargon is very specific to their field of study. A form of

scientific jargon this article used is atomic numbers and symbols. Their use of this jargon makes

it incredibly difficult for people to understand if they are not familiar with the periodic table. We

can see throughout the entire article that the author believes that their readers have a high level of

understanding in different levels of analysis in astronomy such as chondritic logarithmic,

photospheric logarithm, and the 3D radiative-hydrodynamical model. In the case of this

academic article, this kind of information and jargon is necessary and effective for their field of

study and important for their discourse communities. It is not for the general population, and in

their discipline they need this strong academic language to set credibility in their field.

3 M. Asplund, A. M. Amarsi, and N. Grevesse. “The Chemical Make-up of the Sun: A 2020 Vision.”
Astronomy and astrophysics (Berlin) 653 (2021): A141: 1.
 Ulloa 3

Although the discipline of medicine article’s primary audience is other experts in their

field, the wording and organization is formatted to make it accessible for the public. Their

research is pivotal to the futures of young children so they have made their research attainable

for others to implement. Specifically other schools and educators which is why they mentioned

the implementation of their “SunSmart curriculum.”4 They created this program as well as a page

to contact the University of Southern California to take part in this program that's available to

schools in LA county.

In the case of the discipline of medicine, they also take a scientific approach, but the

article that I examined focused more on social preventions. They did this through their own

experiment on a group of fourth and first graders (128 students) called “SunSmart.” They are

using specific methods and theories such as “Intra-class correlation, homophily hypothesis

testing, and exponential random graph models.” 5 Through the theory of homophily, they tested it

through friendships being introduced to sun safety behaviors. To push their point further, they

included research/studies that were under the same umbrella of their current experiment to show

correlation between their research’s credibility. These studies included “peer friendship

networks” and analyzed how they “affect many childhood and adolescent behaviors”, such as

smoking (Alexander et al., 2001; Ennett & Bauman, 1993; Ennett et al., 2008; Kobus, 2003). 6

They included several well known studies to get their audience interested in their research.

Through their experiment evidence was found by observing the Peer leaders (n=21) and the non-

4 Jennifer Tsai, Thomas W. Valente, Kimberly A. Miller, Kayla de la Haye, Trevor A. Pickering, and Myles
G. Cockburn. “Friendship Networks and Sun Safety Behavior among Children.” Network science
(Cambridge University Press) 4, no. 3 (2016): 317.
5 Jennifer Tsai, Thomas W. Valente, Kimberly A. Miller, Kayla de la Haye, Trevor A. Pickering, and Myles
G. Cockburn. “Friendship Networks and Sun Safety Behavior among Children.” Network science
(Cambridge University Press) 4, no. 3 (2016): 314.
6 Jennifer Tsai, Thomas W. Valente, Kimberly A. Miller, Kayla de la Haye, Trevor A. Pickering, and Myles
G. Cockburn. “Friendship Networks and Sun Safety Behavior among Children.” Network science
(Cambridge University Press) 4, no. 3 (2016): 315.
 Ulloa 4

leaders (n=107) and how they reacted to SunSmart intervention.7 The evidence they provided

was that “students cluster based on shared demographic characteristics.”8 Through this

observation they were able to observe the different groups of students and identify all of the

different variables that affect their study. They use statistics to represent their data. They use

specific terms such as mean and SE (standard error) to present their data in tables. For every

variable such as sunscreen use is studied for both leaders and non-leaders then calculated for the

mean and SE. They are very precise with the research including all of the possible demographics

and their homophily test and how those with similar gender, ethnicity, or other social group tend

to follow the same patterns.

Even though both astronomy and medicine are disciplines focused on science, the writers

of the observed articles conduct their research and convey evidence in completely different ways.

In the discipline of astronomy they also include a lot of mathematics in their research. Through

their evidence they used solar photospheric logarithmic abundances and atomic numbers to

represent present day solar abundances through graphs.9 They used atomic numbers and symbols

to represent the different elements that make up the sun. They accomplished this through tables

of data based on photosphere and CI chondrites to compare “present day solar photospheric

abundances together with those in CI chondrites”.10 Throughout the article they include data and

information of every single element that is included in the chemical make-up of the sun. For data

7 Jennifer Tsai, Thomas W. Valente, Kimberly A. Miller, Kayla de la Haye, Trevor A. Pickering, and Myles
G. Cockburn. “Friendship Networks and Sun Safety Behavior among Children.” Network science
(Cambridge University Press) 4, no. 3 (2016): 327.
8 Jennifer Tsai, Thomas W. Valente, Kimberly A. Miller, Kayla de la Haye, Trevor A. Pickering, and
Myles G. Cockburn. “Friendship Networks and Sun Safety Behavior among Children.” Network science
(Cambridge University Press) 4, no. 3 (2016): 314.
9 M. Asplund, A. M. Amarsi, and N. Grevesse. “The Chemical Make-up of the Sun: A 2020 Vision.”
Astronomy and astrophysics (Berlin) 653 (2021): A141: 3.
10 M. Asplund, A. M. Amarsi, and N. Grevesse. “The Chemical Make-up of the Sun: A 2020 Vision.”
Astronomy and astrophysics (Berlin) 653 (2021): A141: 3.
 Ulloa 5

they also include scatter plots to show the different potentials for element abundances. 11 They

mostly focus on representing their data in figures and charts based on two different kinds of

abundances: CI chondritic logarithmic and photospheric logarithm. Lastly to summarize all of

their data they used pie charts to sum up the percentage of every element that makes up the sun.

One thing that both articles do very similarly is the organization and formatting for their

article. They both had the introduction as chapter one and continued chapters with subheadings.

For the discipline about medicine organized through an introduction (chapter 1), then introduced

the date and methods (chapter 2), along with each section having multiple headings such as 2.1-

2.4, which also had their own subheadings that included 2.3.1 -2.3.4. The article was organized

this way to help understand their date better by explaining every variable in their experiment.

Chapter 3 included the results and they organized it not only in words but also a chart (table)

with all the data and three images of that illustrated the homophily overall, by gender and

playing in the shade and by gender and sunscreen use. They made it very easy to understand all

the factors that could possibly affect the children’s skin. The astronomy article is separated into

chapters starting with the introduction. The chapters have subheadings that go over all of the

elements that make up the sun. They are organized like this to thoroughly explain all of the

factors and chemicals that make up the sun. In each chapter, they are comparing different kinds

of abundances to show the differences between them. In addition to organization they followed

the same method of citations. The citation format they used was American Psychological

Association (APA). This correlation was not surprising because APA is the citation method used

for medical and scientific research papers because they need to give credit to those in their field.

11 M. Asplund, A. M. Amarsi, and N. Grevesse. “The Chemical Make-up of the Sun: A 2020 Vision.”
Astronomy and astrophysics (Berlin) 653 (2021): A141: 12.
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The articles included in text citations that included the names of the experts so they are properly

credited in the text for their work.

Through analyzing the way the sun is portrayed through the disciplines of astronomy and

medicine, I was able to understand the distinct purpose and function of each writing style.

Furthermore, while analyzing these two distinct types of writing, I was able to find some

similarities in both. Medicine and astronomy have big differences in regards to their intended

audience, jargon, and their evidence. Where the discipline of medicine's audience was more

general; astronomy’s audience was very focused on other experts in their field because of their

specific jargon. Their jargon was very specific to those in their field to create credibility, where

jargon in astronomy was very minimal, only included in certain forms of analysis. The overall

research of both disciplines was very detailed and included the use of mathematics with the use

of charts and tables. Similarly these two disciplines have similar formats and both used APA

citations to adequately credit experts in their field. Through the topic of the sun the differences

and similarities of the two disciplines was presented through their writing styles.
 Ulloa 7

Bibliography

Asplund, M., A. M. Amarsi, and N. Grevesse. “The Chemical Make-up of the Sun: A

2020 Vision.” Astronomy and astrophysics (Berlin) 653 (2021): A141 1-30.

Tsai, Jennifer, Thomas W. Valente, Kimberly A. Miller, Kayla de la Haye, Trevor A.

Pickering, and Myles G. Cockburn. “Friendship Networks and Sun Safety Behavior

among Children.” Network science (Cambridge University Press) 4, no. 3 (2016): 314–

335.