does anybody actually know why the sky is blue?

Answer 1

I know its a physics question. I know why man hole covers are round. It the only geometrical shape that wont fall into its self. But that dosent answer your question , does it?

Answer 2

Did you ever notice that the sky is not blue at night?
It is only blue during the day. So the molecules in the air are not blue. If they were, then all the stars would look blue, as if we were looking through a blue window.

Our air is mostly nitrogen and oxygen. When sunlight shines on these molecules, they absorb energy. When they give up this energy, they do it according to their electron shells. The general color we see when they do this is blue. When the sun goes down, they stop absorbing energy and stop radiating energy. Then we can see the stars through the clear sky.

;-D Rainbows, sunrises and sunsets, and the green flash are totally different.

Answer 3

The ultraviolet catastrophe was one major problem with Maxwell's Nobel Prize winning theory of electromagnetic radiation. His theory actually said that dipoles (like the molecules in our atmosphere) scattered light more the higher the frequency. Blue light does have a higher frequency than red, for example, BUT, violet light has a higher frequency than blue, so if Maxwell was truly correct, the sky should be VIOLET!!!

Planck's theory (somewhat described on the website below) predicted that a black body radiator (like the molecules in our atmosphere) would absord light and re emit that light at a maximum with a frequency that corresponds to blue light.

So the sky is blue, because light is quantized as are electron energy levels.

Answer 4

Everyone likes to label it as Rayleigh Scattering but still very few explain that term. The Sun emits pure white light. As the sun comes up or sets, the light has more air molecules to travel thru, giving a longer bend to the white light, the reds having a longer frequency, and due to the longer bend of the light from the amount of air, we see reds at sunrise and sunset. AS the Sun climbs higher, it goes thru less air to get to ours eyes. Hence the light is not refracted as much, less bend you might say, blues have a shorter wavelength, so we see blue. Notice on clear cloudless days, the sky is real blue in the middle around noon and appears whitish at the horizon. We are looking at light traveling away from us at the horizon so we see the white light as from the sun. On cloudy or foggy days, less blue because the white light is being filtered by the greyness of the clouds or fog.

Answer 5

The Earth's sky is blue because of fact the air molecules (often nitrogen and oxygen) are lots smaller than the wavelength of light. whilst mild encounters debris lots smaller than its wavelength, the scattered intensity is inversely proportional to the 4'th potential of the wavelength. it extremely is referred to as Rayleigh scattering, and it potential that 0.5 the wavelength is scattered with 2**4 = sixteen circumstances greater intensity. it extremely is why the sky seems blue: the blue mild is scattered some sixteen circumstances greater strongly than the purple mild. Rayleigh scattering is likewise explanation why the putting solar seems purple: the blue mild has been scattered removed from the direct solar. look into this cool internet site:

Answer 6

It's not, it's purple. Our eyes are unable to detect these wavelengths in the presence of blue wavelengths. The reason it's the color it is comes from the way the atmosphere scrambles the incoming radiation from the sun.

Answer 7

The reflection of sunlight off the water. Remember that 2/3rds of the world surface is water. That helps considerably!!!

Answer 8

sun light is made of all the colors of the rainbow......(white light)
the atmosphere has a lot of water vapour in it...refraction & absorbsion of light leaves the blue spectrum...blue sky...

Answer 9

Scientifically, I do not know the answer, but perhaps it was created blue to show off the white clouds. Ha Ha.

Answer 10

sue to gasses in the zone blue is what shows more