What makes the sky blue?

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.




Or the joke answer: So you can tell where the grass starts :)

Answer 2

Its due to Rayleigh scattering - certainly not because its reflecting the ocean which people sometimes say! Rayleigh scattering involved the scattering of light by particles smaller than the wavelength of light. It has a smaller effect on colours with longer wavelengths and that is why the sky is blue - and also in fact why the sun is yellow - if you added up all the blue tint in the sky and focused it in the area of sun you would get its actual colour of bright white.

Physicists used to say that Rayleigh diffraction was responsible for the reddish tint in sunrise and sunset because the light had to travel through more atmosphere to reach us however this is currently disputed and there is another optical theorem at work called 'Lorenz-Mie theory'. Kind regards.

Answer 3

After reading the answers you received I decided I had better clarify a few things for you as there were some inaccurate statements made. First of all visible radiation arriving from the sun is scattered by air molecules, blue through red. Here is the difference. Rayleigh scattering says that scattering is inversely proportion to the fourth power of the wavelength. This means of course that the shorter the wavelength (blue in the case of visible radiation), the greater will be the scattering, if and only if there is no scattering from suspended dust in the atmosphere. This latter type of scattering is referred to as Mie (pronounced me) scattering. I hope this helps you somewhat.

Answer 4

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.

This is termed the Tyndall Effect.

Answer 5

The thickness of the atmosphere make itself a mirror. The color of the oceans reflects through the atmosphere. The nearer the atmosphere on the ocean darker blue it gets. The farther the atmosphere the lighter blue it gets.

Answer 6

The sky is actually colorless, the ocean's blue color actually gets refleted to the sky, so the sky seems to be blue in colour actually it's not it's just the reflection of the ocean's blue colour.

Answer 7

Only the blue wavelength of light is reflected back to us from the particles comprising our atmosphere. Other wavelengths are either passed or absorbed.

Answer 8

The water and dust particles in the atmosphere reflecting off of the sun's rays.

Answer 9

the nitrogen in the air

Answer 10

http://answers.yahoo.com/search/search_result;_ylt=Aq.qXs07BL7KLU9qTVPLN4kJxgt.?p=why+is+sky+blue

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