y is the sky blue ?

Answer 1

The sky is blue due to an atmospheric 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.

*You might get some flack for this - this question has been asked many, many times before.*

Answer 2

Well, for the answer that sounds the best, "Because blue bends best". When the light hits the atmosphere, it separates like a prism. The wavelengths that correspond to blue, bend the most (check your prism), so it scatters the most along the sky. This is also why the sky seems red as the sun goes down, since there is less scattering of light as the sun goes low on the horizon.

Answer 3

Everything we see is given a cloour by the way light reflects of its surface. Light has many different colours depending on the angle of which it is reflected. A good example of this is if you look at the spectrum of colours that appear in a rainbow.

The sky appears blue due to the angel at which the light from the sum reflects through the gases in the atmosphere.

The changing content of gases in the atmosphere and the angel of the light hitting them will create different colours in the sky. This can sometimes be seen by the 'Northern Lights' or by the red sky that we sometimes see in the mornings/evenings.

Answer 4

I've heard two theories on this:

#1--because it reflects the ocean. I don't think this makes much sense, because if you ask why is the ocean blue?, the answer is "because it reflects the sky."

#2--the more plausible theory is that the molecules in the atmosphere reflect blue light and absorb all other colors of light, except at dawn and dusk, when other colors are reflected (due to the vast change in temperature or directness of the sun's rays, maybe?).

Answer 5

Sky is blue due to scattering of light. White light consists of 7 colours out of which blue(violet) colour has got maximum frequency or minimum wavelenght. Acording to Reyligh criteria scattering is inversely proportional to (wavelenght)^4. Hence scattering is seen only for blue light which makes sky appear blue.

Answer 6

Cuz God's a gator fan too.

(God must be a Gator too,
cuz the sun is Orange and the sky is Blue).

Answer 7

i remember blue has the longest wave length so when it hits the atmosphere it's the colour which breaks through, or something like that,

good old school days, Not!!!

Answer 8

Yes, the sky is blue.

And stop calling me "y".

Answer 9

lol -

silly girl.
if was green we woudl not know where the grass ended and the sky began.

Answer 10

THE WHO //I AM THE ONE WITH THE BLUE EYES AND I GAVE THEM THOSE WORDS