Why is the sky blue?

Answer 1

It is the way that the light is broken up that makes it appear blue. Same thing with water.

Answer 2

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 3

It was Einstein who answered this question. It has to do with the way sunlight is scattered by the molecules in the atmosphere. Blue light scatters more than red (Tyndall effect also known as Rayleigh scattering), so more blue light reaches our eye.

There is an excellent description at the website listed below (look at the cartoon and it will be pretty clear).

It is not a reflection from the ocean. And it isn't just water molecules that cause the effect.

Aloha

Answer 4

A clear cloudless day-time sky is blue because molecules in the air scatter blue light from the sun more than they scatter red light. When we look towards the sun at sunset, we see red and orange colors because the blue light has been scattered out and away from the line of sight.
The white light from the sun is a mixture of all colors of the rainbow. This was demonstrated by Isaac Newton, who used a prism to separate the different colors and so form a spectrum. The colours of light are distinguished by their different wavelengths. The visible part of the spectrum ranges from red light with a wavelength of about 720 nm, to violet with a wavelength of about 380 nm, with orange, yellow, green, blue and indigo between. The three different types of colorreceptors in the retina of the human eye respond most strongly to red, green and blue wavelengths, giving us our colour vision.

Answer 5

The wavelenghts refracted from the sun's light off of the earth's atmosphere are at the right color range for blue. At sunset/sunrise the sun is in a different position and the result is a variety of colors, from all different areas of the spectrum.

Answer 6

due to reflection of sea water sky looks blue

Answer 7

Because of the way the atmosphere is configured since Noah's flood. It used to be pink. (IIII'm not jokin'.) (Ever heard of "rose-colored glasses"? They cure dyslexia...)

Answer 8

A late night adult entertainment channel

Answer 9

OMG if I see this question again............