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2006-07-17 08:10:44 · 9 answers · asked by fourlines9 2 in Environment

9 answers

http://math.ucr.edu/home/baez/physics/General/BlueSky/blue_sky.html

2006-07-17 08:12:06 · answer #1 · answered by ShivaMe 2 · 0 0

You may already know that sunlight is actually made up of all the colors of the rainbow: red, orange, yellow, green, blue, and violet. You probably also know that sunlight has to pass through our atmosphere before it reaches our eyes. The gas molecules in the atmosphere break up, or "scatter" the sunlight into its many parts, and they react differently to different colors. Different colors of light have different energies, or wavelengths. For example, red light has a long wavelength while blue light has a short wavelength. The gas molecules in the atmosphere scatter the blue wavelengths better than the red wavelengths. So the sky looks blue.

2006-07-17 15:14:25 · answer #2 · answered by notoriousnicholas 4 · 0 0

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.

2006-07-17 15:12:31 · answer #3 · answered by bombhaus 4 · 0 0

Because atmosphere there ab sobs blue rays of vibgour

2006-07-17 15:15:25 · answer #4 · answered by sukhwinder b 6 · 0 0

reflection of the sun off of the ocean

2006-07-17 15:13:47 · answer #5 · answered by @theist1987 2 · 0 0

Thats a stupid question.

2006-07-17 15:24:51 · answer #6 · answered by NICH178 2 · 0 0

I don't know how old are you?

2006-07-17 15:14:30 · answer #7 · answered by Shining Star 2 · 0 0

cuz it wants to be!

2006-07-17 15:14:22 · answer #8 · answered by Kerry K. 1 · 0 0

Cuz it is!

2006-07-17 15:13:48 · answer #9 · answered by Fivens 3 · 0 0

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