This latest blog post is for those of you who can’t get enough of summer and are madly running around trying to pack five months of summer fun into these last few weeks of the season! Yup, today on Science Mysteries… Explained!!!, we’re going to answer that most mysterious of summertime questions…How in the world does sunscreen work? You may have wondered how slopping on a mucky handful of sunscreen actually keeps the sun from burning your skin. It’s a pretty darn thin layer after all. You can’t even see it after you rub it into your skin. If you think about it, it’s really pretty amazing stuff. So how does it work its anti-itchy, scaly, burning-hot sunburn magic?

There are a couple of answers to that question, since there are a couple of different types of sunscreen. Sunscreens can be either physical-block sunscreens or chemical-block sunscreens. Physical block sunscreens are made up of tiny reflective particles that actually reflect the sunlight away from your skin. They work like millions of teensy mirrors, mirrors that are so small you can’t feel the particles or see them with the naked eye! Chemical block sunscreens work completely differently. Instead of reflecting the sunlight, they are made up of special chemicals that actually absorb it. But the energy from the sunlight has to go somewhere. What happens to it? It is converted into heat energy and the chemical releases it back into the air!

Now that is pretty bizarre and kinda cool technology at the same time. But like all technology, sunscreen science doesn’t like to sit still. It is always advancing. What’s the newest advance to date? A sunscreen that washes onto your skin. No joke! When you take a shower, you wash it on like soap. And it sticks to your skin, even if you try to rinse it off. How does it work? Well, they say that opposites attract, and here’s the proof. The sunscreen has a positive charge that sticks to your skin, which has a negative charge. Have you ever created static on a balloon by rubbing it with a cloth and then been able to pick up things, like puffed rice? This sunscreen works the same way!