Why the sky is blue in colour?

Answer 1

Greetings!

Take a look at this!

http://math.ucr.edu/home/baez/physics/General/BlueSky/blue_sky.html
(Ocean is blue because the sky is blue!)

Good luck

Answer 2

White light is actually a combination of all the colours all mixed up so it looks white.

Green light is white light with the Green colour removed (sounds strange but thats how it works).

Each colour of light has a different 'wave length' - effectivly different amount of energy so it can pass through lesser or greater amounts of materials like air and water.


Now all light travels at the same speed and when it comes from the sun all the colours are there. It all reaches the atmosphere at the same time however the air absorbes some energy from the light. This effectivly some of the light, and the colours with the least energy are most affected. Blue is the weakest and the reds are the strongest. So the blue light is partially blocked making the sky look blue.

Answer 3

To start of with we must understand what light is.

Light isnt just made up of 1 colour, it contains a number of different colours each of which has a different wavelength. Light is split up into the following colours with the first having the longest wavelenght and the last having the shortest.

Red
Orange
Yellow
Green
Blue
Indico
Violet

An easy way to rememeber this is ROY G BIV (my year 12 geology teacher taught me that about 8 years ago)

As light moves through the atmosphere, most of the longer wavelengths are able to 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 in the atmosphere which is mainly nitrogen (78%) and oxygen (21%). The absorbed blue light is then scattered in all different directions. Since you see the blue light from everywhere overhead, the sky looks blue.

On Earth, the sun appears yellow. If you were out in space, or on the moon, the sun would look white. In space, there is no atmosphere to scatter the sun's light. On Earth, some of the shorter wavelength light (the blues and violets) are removed from the direct rays of the sun by scattering. The remaining colors together appear yellow.

You didnt ask about sunsets, but what the heck it may come in handy some day :)

What happens during sunsets is that as the sun begins to go down, the light must travel farther through the atmosphere before it gets to you. More of the light is reflected and scattered. As less light reaches you directly, the sun appears less bright. The color of the sun itself appears to change, first to orange and then to red. This is because even more of the short wavelength blues and greens are now scattered. Only the longer wavelengths are left in the direct beam that reaches your eyes.

Hope this helped you out a bit.

Answer 4

The sky is blue due to an atmosphetic effect called Rayleigh scattering - certainly not because its reflecting the ocean which people sometimes say! Rayleigh scattering involves the scattering of light by molecules 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, which is what you’d see in space.

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'.

http://science.howstuffworks.com/question39.htm
http://math.ucr.edu/home/baez/physics/General/BlueSky/blue_sky.html
http://hyperphysics.phy-astr.gsu.edu/hbase/atmos/blusky.html
http://www.exo.net/~pauld/physics/why_is_sky_blue.html

Kind regards.

Answer 5

The sky is blue because of a process called Rayleigh scattering. Light arriving from the sun hits the molecules in the air and is scattered in all directions. The amount of scattering depends dramatically on the frequency, that is, the colour of the light.

Blue light, which has a high frequency, is scattered 10 times more than red light, which has a lower frequency. So the 'background' scattered light we see in the sky is blue.

This same process also explains the beautiful red colours at sunset. When the sun is low on the horizon, its light has to pass through a large amount of atmosphere on its way to us. During the trip, blue light is scattered away, but red light, which is less susceptible to scattering, can continue on its direct path to our eyes.

Answer 6

The sky is not blue, it just appears to be blue at certain times of the day. At sunset and sunrise it appears to be a whole multitude of colours. The sky is full of particles which acts as a colloidal system that operates as a lens, splitting the white light to give the sky a certain hue depending at what angle the light impacts upon it.

Answer 7

The sun's rays hit the Earth's atmosphere, where the light is scattered by nitrogen and oxygen molecules in the air. The blue wavelength of this light is affected more than the red and green wavelengths, causing the surrounding air to appear blue. At sunset, the sun's light passes farther through the atmosphere, deflecting and decreasing the blue in the air. Scattering by dust particles and pollution in the air causes the sunset to appear red.

Answer 8

Blue light has the shortest wavelength and so it is easiest to egt through the ozon layer from the spectrum that the sun gives off. the sky DOES NOT REFLECT THE SEA!!! the reason that the sea is blue is because IT reflects the sky.
hope this is the answer your looking for
Ali

Answer 9

It's not SKY alone. Anything that is deep appears blue color.

It's called Raley scattering. When light composed of all colors travel from a 'distant' source, those of shorter wavelengths get absorbed by the gas molecules in the air. Colors of shorter wavelenghts are red..orange... and so on.. Imagine the light falling on a particle where red, orange etc., get absorved. you think that blue is being scattered out of the surface ....

Answer 10

It's a combonation of things,.. so everyone might know one part but not all the parts.

People think of water as blue. All the water on Earth does come across more blue from a distance (maybe on the way to a trip to the "Moon"). So there is already alot of blue on Earth without the sky.

Moveing on. There is alot of things floating up there,.. think of all the moisture. Okay,.. look into this,.. different large ammounts of chemicals in the air, I suppose Pollution could be an obvious example but other things do tint to other colors some times. (I didn't structure that sentence correctly,.. different elements in the sky look different colors). But ya,.. look back into that whole we got alot of water on Earth and cycleing to return to Earth thing.

Then there is the angle of light. There is this belief that the light reflecting off our stuff up there (way too many things in our atmosphere...sss to name) acts much like lenses and Prizms. Different angles different positions,... different colors come through. (Something fun to look into).

Now you have to combine those on top of things. Different stuff floating up there gives off a different color from being hit different ways. So yes,.. water is important. But the sky is not always blue ( watch a Sun set or Sun rise for different colors). Then if you want to see what less moisture plus more stuff some times turns into,.. look at pictures of the skys in Arizona. If you want to see what happens with things are swirling up there plus different things are bounceing off and reflecting different things look at pictures of the Arura Bori Alice (I can't spell, I'm just typeing what it sounds like). So even some time different things reflect and different combos happen as different strengths,.. and have I bored you yet? XD

There are more things that can be factored in and covered,.. but I'm hopeing this is enough and makes the most sense.

Answer 11

high frequency, high speed UV light reaches us from the sun. the particles in the atmosphere scatter this light and gives it the blue colour. In the evening the slowerspeed and lower frequency Infra Red light reaches our plannet and the particles in the atmoshere reflect this light hence giving the orange/red tint of our sunsets.