Why is the sky blue?

Answer 1

The sky isn't really blue. It just LOOKS blue.

Take the sun. If you look straight at the sun (not recommended) you'll see pretty much white - most of the light pretty much goes straight through. But if you look off to one side of the sun, you will see the light that was heading for a different spot, but which then deflected in your direction. It is easier to deflect short (blue) wavelengths than long (red) ones, so most of the time the sky looks blue.

You'll note that when it is low on the horizon (during sunrise and sunset) the sun will often look reddish... now that the sunlight is passing through more of the air, almost everything BUT the red is deflected. You can see where the light is deflected to after the sun goes down - for a while, you can't see the sun but there's still light to see by... all that deflected light!

If you need more proof, think of this - if the sky were really blue, then almost everything you saw through it would be bluish. All the stars would be blue. All the clouds would be blue, and all the snow on the mountain-tops would be blue. In fact, none of these things are always blue... so any blueness you see is probably not a result of the sky itself.

Answer 2

The sky is blue due to something called Raleigh Scattering. Basically think of a prism, as light passes through, the colors blue and purple are bent more (they come out of the pointed side), while red and orange are bent less (have to travel through the thicker glass in order to be bent). The same basic principal occurs in our atmosphere. As the light from the sun hits the air in our atmosphere, it gets bent as it slows down (light moves more slowly in air then in a vaccuum). This affects the shorter wavelengths more, so that we see blue. The sunsets appear redder for 2 reasons, one is this scattering - the light is travelling through more air, and the other is pollution, different chemicals reflect different colors of light

Answer 3

Because nitrogen looks blue in the sunlight and the atmosphere is composed mostly of nitrogen. Oxygen comprises only about 18% of the air we breathe. If it were much higher than that, the air might ignite! Thank goodness nitrogen is an inert gas and won't explode! If the atmosphere were comprised mostly of oxygen, it would look more yellow in the sunlight.

Answer 4

because it is every color but blue and the blue is reflected due to the chemicals in the atmosphere and their level of concentration

Answer 5

sunlight reflecting the ozone and CO2 gas floating in the atmosphere..

Answer 6

because its not yellow lmao