Why is the sky blue?

Question

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Answer 1

Blue light gets scattered more than any other colour in the light spectrum. So we get to see the overall affect by seeing the sky blue. This is confirmed by when we see the sun in the early morrning and late afternoon at sunrise and at sunset where it appears red (white light - blue light gives predominantly red light). Furthermore if you look at the sun through smoke it appears red as blue light gets scattered from its light.

And we can never forget those beautiful sunsets after Mt Pinatubo in Indonesia erupted in the 1980's and pushed a huge amount of dust into the atmosphere which too many months to disperse and was scattered all through the earth's atmosphere.

Home Experiment:

Get a clear plastic bottle and fill it with clear water and then put in a drop or two of milk. Shake well to disperse the milk thrrough the water. Go into a darkened room and shine a torch through its length. Observe from the side and the scattered light will appear blue. Look through the other end and the light from the torch will appear red.

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

Actually- it's black. The "blue" color you see is what's left of the sunlight that's scattered by the dust particles in our atmosphere. If you've ever noticed; the clearer (or cleaner) the air- the darker blue the sky is. If you could remove ALL the dust- the sky would be as black as it is on the moon, where there is no atmosphere to hold the dust in. I've heard the sky on Mars is pale pink- because the dust THERE- is rust colored... Neat- huh?!

Answer 4

Light energy, when entering the earth's atmosphere from space, slows down in speed or refracts. The blue light of the visible spectrum has a wavelength that matches the particles when the sun is at a particular range of angles to the atmospheric particles. By contrast, when the angle of the sun's rays to the earth changes, the red, orange and violet wavelengths of visible light better match the particles of the atmosphere and so at sunrise and sunset we see red and pink light in the sky.

Answer 5

the blue colour of the sky is as a results of Rayleigh scattering. As gentle strikes interior the direction of the ambience, many of the longer wavelengths pass at present by way of. Little of the pink, orange and yellow gentle is tormented by way of the air. despite the fact that if, many of the shorter wavelength gentle is absorbed by way of the gasoline molecules. The absorbed blue gentle is then radiated in diverse instructions. It gets scattered all over the sky. Whichever direction you look, a number of this scattered blue gentle reaches you. considering you spot the blue gentle from everywhere overhead, the sky seems blue.

Answer 6

hi, i have learned this from my 10 yr old daughter same question. i dont know the answer at the first time, but here it is my research. sky color is a reflection of the earch color. we all understand that 2/3 of our earth is consist of water, color blue, so that is why the color reflected in the sky that we saw every daylight is blue not white or brown or green. in the night time, sky is black/empty, not enough light from the sun.

Answer 7

light receptors in your eyes are composed of rods and cones your eyes percive blue better than any other color and because blue light is the dominant light being refracted at the convex of the atmosphere you see blue but this changes depending on the position of the sun relative to your location hence sun rises and sun sets appear more orange and red.

Answer 8

Thank god for a couple of correct answers. As im reading down the list i was wondering if their was ever going to be someone answer the question with a higher IQ than 28. you guys have restored my faith in yahoo users. Honestly if you know your stupid try sticking to answering questions like Can you tell me where my kitty poops. In case you people dont know, water is clear.

Answer 9

since nitrogen is mostly in the air and absorbs blue pigments, thats why, and to the person that say refelction of the ocean, no its the other way around. Think about it, you take water out, its clear.

Answer 10

It's Carolina Blue,because,God is a UNC,Tarheels fan