2007-01-09 03:03:19 · 9 answers · asked by rlentz3000 1 in Science & Mathematics ➔ Earth Sciences & Geology
It's due to a phenomenon called Rayleigh scattering. When light encounters particles much smaller than the wavelength of light, the light scatters. Atmospheric gas is an enormous resevoir of such particles. Short wavelengths scatter the most effectively, and blue has a short wavelength, so the blue light scatters and appears to fill the sky. Note that violet has a shorter wavelength than blue, but the human eye is not very good at seeing violet, so blue appears to dominate instead.
2007-01-09 03:07:04 · answer #1 · answered by DavidK93 7 · 0⤊ 0⤋
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.
2007-01-09 11:08:40 · answer #2 · answered by Superdog 7 · 0⤊ 0⤋
light contains 7 colors the blue color is best deflected by the surfface of the earth so this projecta blue cloud.
2007-01-09 11:11:31 · answer #3 · answered by lans 1 · 0⤊ 0⤋
Light reflects off of water vapor in the atmosphere.
2007-01-09 11:07:11 · answer #4 · answered by bequalming 5 · 0⤊ 0⤋
Rayleigh diffraction. If you ran a search you'd see this has been asked about a million times before.
2007-01-09 11:06:50 · answer #5 · answered by Anonymous · 0⤊ 0⤋
its the reflection of water
2007-01-09 11:11:24 · answer #6 · answered by Anonymous · 0⤊ 0⤋
ask your Mommy or Daddy
2007-01-09 11:10:58 · answer #7 · answered by Mopar Muscle Gal 7 · 0⤊ 0⤋
because of the ultraviolet rays...
2007-01-09 11:07:16 · answer #8 · answered by Amanda P 4 · 0⤊ 0⤋
because thats how GOD made it
2007-01-09 11:06:47 · answer #9 · answered by bandi 2 · 1⤊ 4⤋