why is the sky blue?

Answer 1

Because it's not red.. Joke...

Why is the Sky Blue?


It is easy to see that the sky is blue. Have you ever wondered why? A lot of other smart people have, too. And it took a long time to figure it out!

The light from the Sun looks white. But it is really made up of all the colors of the rainbow.



A prism is a specially shaped crystal. When white light shines through a prism, the light is separated into all its colors.

If you visited The Land of the Magic Windows, you learned that the light you see is just one tiny bit of all the kinds of light energy beaming around the Universe--and around you!

Like energy passing through the ocean, light energy travels in waves, too. Some light travels in short, "choppy" waves. Other light travels in long, lazy waves. Blue light waves are shorter than red light waves.



All light travels in a straight line unless something gets in the way to--


reflect it (like a mirror)

bend it (like a prism)

or scatter it (like molecules of the gases in the atmosphere)

Sunlight reaches Earth's atmosphere and is scattered in all directions by all the gases and particles in the air. Blue light is scattered in all directions by the tiny molecules of air in Earth's atmosphere. Blue is scattered more than other colors because it travels as shorter, smaller waves. This is why we see a blue sky most of the time.


Closer to the horizon, the sky fades to a lighter blue or white. The sunlight reaching us from low in the sky has passed through even more air than the sunlight reaching us from overhead. As the sunlight has passed through all this air, the air molecules have scattered and rescattered the blue light many times in many directions. Also, the surface of Earth has reflected and scattered the light. All this scattering mixes the colors together again so we see more white and less blue.

Hope this can help...

Answer 2

Who says it is?
Who's to say we don't all see the sky as a different colour, but we've come to call that colour "blue" because it's what everyone has always said the sky is?

Answer 3

b/c the ocean is blue... and the sunlight reflects off the ocean making the sky blue

Answer 4

Sunlight contains all colours(wavelengths). Because of its shorter wavelength, blue light is scattered by particles and tha atmosphere much more than red light.so we see this scattered light. If you look at the sun as its sets it looks red as all the blue light has been scattered.

Answer 5

the night sky is not black it is a very dark blue and when the sun is up it looks brighter

Answer 6

The particles diffuse more wavelengths shot than large one

In fact the amount of light diffused is I =c/(wavelength)^4

So as the blue light is short , it is more diffused

Answer 7

It's all about light and reflection! Go here to learn:

http://www.sciencemadesimple.com/sky_blue.html

Answer 8

All the reasons are here
http://spaceplace.nasa.gov/en/kids/misrsky/misr_sky.shtml

Answer 9

http://math.ucr.edu/home/baez/physics/General/BlueSky/blue_sky.html