My son asked a good question...why is the sky blue?

Question

He's 5 years old, and so curious about everything. I like to have answers for him, but I'm just stumped on this one.

Answer 1

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.

This is from science made simple... which is rather acurate and easy to understand with backings as to why. What a nice mom to find the real answers!

Answer 2

This is the very adult version of your answer :) Good luck converting it for a 5 year old.

Gas molecules are smaller than the wavelength of visible light. If light bumps into them, it acts differently. When light hits a gas molecule, some of it may get absorbed. After awhile, the molecule radiates (releases, or gives off) the light in a different direction. The color that is radiated is the same color that was absorbed. The different colors of light are affected differently. All of the colors can be absorbed. But the higher frequencies (blues) are absorbed more often than the lower frequencies (reds). This process is called Rayleigh scattering. (It is named after Lord John Rayleigh, an English physicist, who first described it in the 1870's.)

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 3

The sky is blue because oxygen is absorbing a portion of the many of the colors of sunlight and transmitting the more of the blue color of the sky. Oxygen is not clear, it is actually very pale blue. You can see this if you ever get a chance to see liquid oxygen – it is blue.

Now the atmosphere is too thin to completely filter the other colors of light. But when you look through 50 or 100 miles of air, the atmosphere is thick enough to see the color of oxygen. Yes I said 100 miles, 50 miles being the common limit for space. Straight up and down, the atmosphere is 50 miles thick. At a 30 degree angle the atmosphere is closer to 100 miles thick. So you are seeing 100 miles of air.

Answer 4

Well the reason why this is is to do with refraction. As sunlight enters the Earths atmosphere from space, it REFRACTS. What this basically means is that as its going from a vacuum into air all of a sudden, the sunlight bends and slows down. (remember those prism spectrum experiments at school?)

As it does so, it turns blue, which is why the sky appears blue.
The same reason why sunset is red for example, as the angle of the sun and the refraction makes it red.

And I dont know how the hell you're gonna explain that to a clever 5 year old!!!

PS. its not reflection but REFRACtion. It has nothing to do with water or the oceans!

Answer 5

As light passes through the atmosphere it scatters somewhat. The different colors of light scatter to different degrees. The shorter wavelengths scatter least. The longer scatter more. Blue is at the longer end. The reds oranges etc come to you more directly. The blue end of the spectrum appears to come from all over the sky.

Answer 6

I "googled" your question - hope this helps. And, what a great little guy you have to be seeking answers to bigger questions than when his favorite TV program is on!!
Why is the Sky Blue? Learn about the atmosphere and how light scattering makes the sky look blue. Plus, get great science projects to do.
www.sciencemadesimple.com/sky_blue.html

Answer 7

A clear cloudless day-time sky is blue because molecules in the air scatter blue light from the sun more than they scatter red light. When we look towards the sun at sunset, we see red and orange colours because the blue light has been scattered out and away from the line of sight.

Answer 8

the effect is called Rayleigh Scattering by physicists. Basically air molecules in the atmosphere refract more blue light than red, making the sky appear blue. When the sun is close to the horizon, dusk or dawn, we see more red light because most of the blue light is refracted out of our line of sight at that low angle of the sun. hope this helps!

Answer 9

sorry, but they are wrong... It is the light reflecting through the atmosphere... Certain gases in the atmosphere reflect certain colors in the light spectrum giving us the color of blue... Same reason at dawn and dusk the sky turns pink and orange, when the sun goes in at different angles it comes out at different colors.

Answer 10

Because a purple sky would totally clash with the brown earth and green plants and a red sky would look too ominous.