Why the sky is blue?

Answer 1

The sun's rays hit the Earth's atmosphere, where the light is scattered by nitrogen and oxygen molecules in the air. The blue wavelength of this light is affected more than the red and green wavelengths, causing the surrounding air to appear blue. At sunset, the sun's light passes farther through the atmosphere, deflecting and decreasing the blue in the air. Scattering by dust particles and pollution in the air causes the sunset to appear red.

Answer 2

Because if it were green, we wouldn't know where to stop cutting the grass. Seriously... on a clear cloudless day, the reason the sky looks blue is because molecule is the air scatter blue light from the sun more than they scatter red light. Therefore that is why sunsets look red, because the sunlight is passing through a lot of the atmosphere scattering the blue leaving the red.

Answer 3

The sky is blue because of Rayleigh scattering. There are many colors that compose the light spectrum, however, the wavelength that makes blue is most efficient at passing through the atmosphere and the color that reaches us most is blue. That is why you see blue when you look at the sky. Thus the ocean appears blue because it is reflecting the light waves from the atmosphere.

Answer 4

*deep breath*

The blue color of the sky is due to Rayleigh scattering. As light moves through the atmosphere, most of the longer wavelengths pass straight through. Little of the red, orange and yellow light is affected by the air.

However, much of the shorter wavelength light is absorbed by the gas molecules. The absorbed blue light is then radiated in different directions. It gets scattered all around the sky. Whichever direction you look, some of this scattered blue light reaches you. Since you see the blue light from everywhere overhead, the sky looks blue.

As you look closer to the horizon, the sky appears much paler in color. To reach you, the scattered blue light must pass through more air. Some of it gets scattered away again in other directions. Less blue light reaches your eyes. The color of the sky near the horizon appears paler or white.

Answer 5

It has nothing to do with reflection off the earth's water.

Diffuse sky radiation is solar radiation reaching the earth's surface after having been scattered from the direct solar beam by molecules or suspensoids in the atmosphere. Also called skylight, diffuse skylight, or sky radiation. Of the total light removed from the direct solar beam by scattering in the atmosphere (approximately 25 percent of the incident radiation), about two-thirds ultimately reaches the earth as diffuse sky radiation.

Scattering is the process by which small particles suspended in a medium of a different index of refraction diffuse a portion of the incident radiation in all directions. In (elastic) scattering, no energy transformation results, only a change in the spatial distribution of the radiation. The science of optics usually uses the term to refer to the deflection of photons that occurs when they are absorbed and re-emitted by atoms or molecules.

The sky is blue partly because air scatters short-wavelength light in preference to longer wavelengths. Where the sunlight is nearly tangent to the Earth's surface, the light's path through the atmosphere is so long that much of the blue and even yellow light is scattered out, leaving the sun rays and the clouds it illuminates red, at sunrise and sunset.

Scattering and absorption are major causes of the attenuation of radiation by the atmosphere. Scattering varies as a function of the ratio of the particle diameter to the wavelength of the radiation. When this ratio is less than about one-tenth, Rayleigh scattering occurs in which the scattering coefficient varies inversely as the fourth power of the wavelength. At larger values of the ratio of particle diameter to wavelength, the scattering varies in a complex fashion described, for spherical particles, by the Mie theory; at a ratio of the order of 10, the laws of geometric optics begin to apply.

Individual gas molecules are too small to scatter light effectively. However, in a gas, the molecules move more or less independently of each-other, unlike in liquids and solids where the density is determined the molecule's sizes. So the densities of gases, such as pure air, are subject to statistical fluctuations. Significant fluctuations are much more common on a small scale. It is mainly these density fluctuations on a small (tens of nanometers) scale that cause the sky to be blue.

Answer 6

gas in the atmosphere refracts the sunlight

The ocean appears blue because it reflects the sky.

Answer 7

every color of the rainbow prism bounces off the earth atmosphere exept for blue which filters through...don't know why blue is the only color that filters through...it has something to do with the 3/4 the earth being ocean

Answer 8

the water droplets in the atmosphere reflect the blue end of the spectrum

Answer 9

because of the atmosphere (elements inside) eventually as the atmposphere deteriorates, it will change, most likely will turn redish brown, like Mars. but not for thousands of years.

Answer 10

There are gnomes in the upper atmosphere that paint it. The same ones that attack planes.