Hi.

>Is the sun your "average" star?

That is a tricky question. It depends on what you mean by average. Usually when people say that they mean that the sun is a "normal" middle aged star. There are stars that are bigger, hotter and brighter and stars which are smaller, cooler and dimmer than the Sun. There are also other stars that are farther along in their lifetimes and are different yet again, but the Sun will get to its old age eventually!

However, if you were to calculate average properties for stars, the Sun would come out larger, hotter, and brighter than average. This is because there are a lot more small, cool, dim stars than large, hot, bright stars and there are more stars smaller then the Sun than larger than the Sun. Just as a note when you look out at the night sky you mostly see the brighter starts because they are, well, bright.

>How was the sun made?

We think the Sun was formed from a cloud of gas and dust left over from the exploded remains of other, earlier stars. Something disturbed the cloud so that clumps formed and then gravity made the clumps start to fall in on themselves.There is more on that here:

http://www.windows2univer...ystem/formation.html