why is the sky blue?

Answer 1

It is the way the atmosphere refracts light

Answer 2

It is a process called Rayleigh scattering.

Lord Rayleigh, a British mathematician and physicist who won the Nobel Prize for physics in 1904, did a lot of work on the molecules of the gases of the atmosphere. He discovered that it is not only the larger particles in the air that scatter light but the molecules of the gases - nitrogen and oxygen - do it too. The molecules, however are so small that they scatter some wavelengths (colours) more than others. A photon from the blue end of the spectrum is 3.2 times more likely to be scattered than a photon at the red end. This process is called Rayleigh Scattering.

What this means is that while all colours of the rainbow are scattered by the molecules of the atmosphere, a photon that is scattered towards you is 3.2 times more likely to be blue than red. Overall this makes the sky look blue.

As the sun begins its descent towards the west in the afternoon the photons have to pass through greater and greater depths of the atmosphere as the angle between the observer and the sun changes. Scattering continues but there are more molecules to do the scattering. The blue photons keep getting scattered by more and more molecules until very few get through to the observer. This means that the green photons, then the yellow, then the orange and finally the red will dominate so that as the sun drops below the horizon, the sky is red. The reverse happens in the mornings.

Answer 3

Why is the sky blue?

Light is a kind of energy that can travel through space. Light from the sun or a light bulb looks white, but it is really a mixture of many colors. The colors in white light are red, orange, yellow, green, blue and violet. You can see these colors when you look at a rainbow in the sky.

The sky is filled with air. Air is a mixture of tiny gas molecules and small bits of solid stuff, like dust.

As sunlight goes through the air, it bumps into the molecules and dust. When light hits a gas molecule, it may bounce off in a different direction. Some colors of light, like red and orange, pass straight through the air. But most of the blue light bounces off in all directions. In this way, the blue light gets scattered all around the sky.

When you look up, some of this blue light reaches your eyes from all over the sky. Since you see blue light from everywhere overhead, the sky looks blue.

In space, there is no air. Because there is nothing for the light to bounce off, it just goes straight. None of the light gets scattered, and the "sky" looks dark and black.

Answer 4

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

Because someone 1500 years ago in Europe associated the color we now know as "blue" with a word like "bla" or "bleu" and it slowly developed into the modern English word "blue"

Answer 6

the water droplets in the atmosphere refract the blue end of the spectrum

Answer 7

Because the rain absorbs blue from the rainbow and reflects light.

Answer 8

If you've never seen the commercial...

"All colors have wavelengths, which are diffused by nitrogen and oxygen. Since blue has the shortest wavelength, it's diffused up to ten times more."

If a color is diffused, it becomes visible.

Answer 9

Steven Wright once said that, "beacuse if (the sky) were green, we wouldn't know when to stop mowing our lawn."

Answer 10

why is the grass green? it's just the way God made the earth.