why is the sky blue?

Answer 1

It's due to a phenomenon called Rayleigh scattering. When light encounters particles much smaller than the wavelength of light, the light scatters. Atmospheric gas is an enormous resevoir of such particles. Short wavelengths scatter the most effectively, and blue has a short wavelength, so the blue light scatters and appears to fill the sky. Note that violet has a shorter wavelength than blue, but the human eye is not very good at seeing violet, so blue appears to dominate instead.

Answer 2

The sky is blue partly because air scatters short-wavelength light in preference to longer wavelengths. Combined, these effects scatter (bend away in all directions) some short, blue light waves while allowing almost all longer, red light waves to pass straight through. When we look toward a part of the sky not near the sun, the blue color we see is blue light waves scattered down toward us from the white sunlight passing through the air overhead. Near sunrise and sunset, most of the light we see comes in nearly tangent to the Earth's surface, so that 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.

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.

Answer 3

the sky absorbs at a certain frequency

it absorbs more red than blue

therefore blue is shown

Answer 4

Oh why oh why.....

why must this question be asked again and again and again???

here is one of the best answers from same question asked previously:

Best Answer - Chosen by Asker

particles, particles, in the sky. Oh i wonder how stupid is that guy?

Answer 5

ozone, which makes up the outermost layers of our atmosphere, reflect the blue light spectrum, and therefore, the sky appears blue.

When you see a sunset, it is the light of the sun refelecting through different cloud, gass, and dust layers in the atmosphere to produce different colors.

Answer 6

because it wanted to match the ocean because they are best friends and the sky is a copy cat

Answer 7

See website below

Answer 8

try searching old answers for this question. it was asked 1000 times.

Answer 9

rayleigh scattering

Answer 10

to give philosophers something to talk about