Exactly why is the sky blue?

Question

mum always told me that the sky was blue because the sea is blue. when i asked why is the sea blue she said 'because the sky is blue'. being a puzzled little kid, i asked my dad, and my uncle and my teachers, and guess what they ALL said the same thing. now im 20 and still baffled by it, so help?!?! y is the sky blue? (and dnt say 'cuz the sea is!')

Answer 1

Here comes the blue sky again. This link will definitely give you all sorts of answers. Goodluck in your pursuit of finding why the sky is blue.♥
http://answers.yahoo.com/search/search_result;_ylt=AnBogW8vfb70herM.n0sCJjpy6IX?p=why+is+the+sky+blue

Answer 2

Sometimes I just despair at yahoo answers, I must have seen this question about ten times this month.

The sky is blue due to Rayleigh scattering. The gases in the air scatter the light and the amount of scattering is dependent on the forth power of the frequency (and some other factors which I will not go into), the up shot of this is the blue end of the spectrum is scatter A LOT more than the red end. Hence the blue part of the sun's light appears to come from all over the sky, making the sky look blue. Several factors make the sea blue but it is mostly a combination of very clear water deep water which reflects the a very bright and blue sky.

Answer 3

Basically, the sky has no colour: it is transparent. At night, when the Sun and Moon are below the horizon, it is black, except where the stars shine through it. When the Moon rises, it turns gray: light scattered by the air molecules, but not bright enough to trigger the colour receptors in our eyes. When the Sun is in the sky, it turns blue because of Rayleigh scattering by air molecules. It is still transparent, though, because you can see the Sun and Moon through it, and even bright planets and stars if you know exactly where to look. When the Sun is low in the sky, or just below the horizon, the sky shows various colours due to complex scattering and refraction.

Answer 4

Its to do with the sun's light being scattered if u do an experiment with a fish tank, shine a torch at one end fill up the tank with water and pour some detol into it, mix it and shine the torch through, at the other end a orange circle will appear and the water will look blue. this is a model for the sun, our atmosphere and the sky. The torch represents the sun, the orange circle of relected light is the sun as we see it through the atmosphere, the figsh tank and water represents the sky...
The sunlight which is white light is scattered through the atmosphere and scattered into the two parts of the spectrum... This is how the sky appears to be blue, because the sunlight is scattered.

Answer 5

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 6

the sky is blue because of the shape of the earth as it is not exactly round but oval light hits it at an angle. think of a prism when white light hits that prism the light breaks up into other colours it is simply the same principal the white light from the sun hits the earth and turns the sky blue also takie into acount the gases in the atmospher

Answer 7

Oxygen is about 21% of the atmosphere by volume. Oxygen very slightly absorbs the visible spectrum of light coming from the sun, blue (higher frequency, shorter wavelength) is least absorbed so the sky 'shines' blue. It is nothing to do with the sea, the sky is blue over the middle of the Sahara Desert. Liquid oxygen is pale blue to look at (don't get too close, don't smoke), the absorbtion is stronger as a liquid as the oxgen molecules are packed so much closer.

Answer 8

The sky is blue due to a phenomenon called the Tyndall Effect.

This explains that the reflection of sunlight off suspended particles [of dust] in the atmosphere (the atmosphere is a colloid) filters most colours of the spectrum and paermits mainly blue light to reach the ground. The angle of the sun is important; during the day mainly blue light is reflected but as the angle of the sun shallows (in the evening) the wavelengths towards the red end of the spectrum are favoured and hence we have coloured sunsets.

Answer 9

Our sky is blue because the short blue mavelengths of sunlight scatter in all directions as the light strikes air molecules, other particles and water and ice from clouds.

Answer 10

The main reason light from the sky is blue is Rayleigh scattering (named after Lord Rayleigh), which is the scattering of light, or other electromagnetic radiation, by particles much smaller than the wavelength of the light. It occurs when light travels in transparent solids and liquids, but is most prominently seen in gases.