why is the sky blue?

Question

and not any other colour...what????

Answer 1

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 2

The light rays are reflected off of the sea and so therefore it is blue. It also has to do with the fact that the sky absorbs light and reflects blue and purple etc down the spectrum.

Answer 3

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 redirect 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

Answer 4

Because bananas are yellow, the grass is green, blood is red and god was really running out of colours by the time he got to the sky.

Answer 5

earth is mostly covered by water, its curvature deflects light in blue band of the spectrum. same colour is reflected back by atmospheric particals including moisture thus sky seems blue. as we go higher into space the sky becomes black because density of atmospheric paerticals drops to zero. no reflection no color

Answer 6

Visible Sunlight has the colors red, orange, yellow, green, blue, indigo, and violet in it. When the sunlight passes through the atmosphere (straight down), the only color that remains is blue. The rest are absorbed by the various components in the atmosphere.

Answer 7

The sky is blue because it is reflecting the entire ocean's surface. If the oceans were green, it would do the same.

Answer 8

it has to do with the length of waves. since the sun radiates energy/waves and each wavelength has a different color. hence, the wavelengths submitted in teh daytime result in the color blue, it is blue. in the smae way, when the sun goes down, waves get smaller so the sky is a reddish/orange.

Answer 9

Its not always blue, try grey, white, red, orange, purple. It all to do on how the light reflects on stuff. You might get some help from a physics book!

Answer 10

I think its to do with the way that the light spectrum is broken as its refracted around the shape of the earth. Not a hugely scientific I know.....