Why is the sky blue?

Answer 1

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 2

The sky is blue because of the light. When the suns light (white light) passes through the atmosphere, the light is bent to reflect the blue. It is the gas molecules in the sky that causes the bending of the light. This is not caused by the oeans, as some believe (the sky is blue over the desert and jungles). When the sun is in different positions the light bends at a different angle, which is why sunrise and sunsets are shades of red, yello, orange and purple (Not dark blue if it was caused by the reflection of the ocean).

Answer 3

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 4

explanation taken from the link listed


"...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...."

Answer 5

Light form the sun is made up of several different colors, each of which has its own wavelength. The wavelength of the blue part of the sun's light is shorter than the size of an oxygen atom. When the blue light waves hit the oxygen atoms in the Earth's atmosphere, they are scattered, making the sky appar blue. The light waves of other colors (with greater wavelengths than blue) are also affected, but the blue waves are scattered more than most.

Answer 6

Oh goodness gracious (not to you, to the first few answers). It isn't a reflection of the oceans. It is called Rayleigh scattering.

The light from the sun contains all of the different colors. As it passes just outside of the earth's atmosphere, it hits the dusty atmosphere. Different colors get redirected by hitting that dust. Red goes straight. Blue shoots off at a right angle, such as down toward earth and your eyeball. Your eyeball gets blue, so that is what color you determine the sky to be. Took me four years of college to find this out.

That was overly simplistic, but I hope that you at least get the point. For more info http://hyperphysics.phy-astr.gsu.edu/hbase/atmos/blusky.html

Answer 7

Sky is blue because it reflects light in the high end of the Light Spectrum. Water does the same thing. Water however absorbs the lower end of the Light spectrum so we don't see Red Reflected form water. It is the reflected light that we see off of everything. (Except of course the light source itself." You should check out a book on Light Optics and you will find it interesting.

Answer 8

there are very tiny particles in the atmosphere that deflect sunlight. Since they are so small, they only deflect the smallest wavelengths of light. The smallest wavelength in the visible spectrum is violet, but there isnt as much violet as blue in sunlight, and blue is still small enough to be deflected to a large enough extent. So,we, as viewers from the ground, see the blue light deflected down to us from the sky above. The longer wavelengths of red and orange pass through and are not deflected to us. So, we only see blue as the color of the sky

Answer 9

The white light from the sun is a mixture of all colours of the rainbow. This was demonstrated by Isaac Newton, who used a prism to separate the different colours 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 colour receptors in the retina of the human eye respond most strongly to red, green and blue wavelengths, giving us our colour vision

Answer 10

sorry but it is definantly not because the ocean is blue.the only reason water appears blues is because the light reflects off the water molecule. It has to do with the sun light refracting off the atmosphere and because the human eye is more sensitive to blue light then violet/purple.