no one has given me a good, believable answer yet. they always tell its a reflection off the water, or color beams that reflects from the sun thru the moisture in the air. its a bunch of crap
2007-03-09 06:24:32 · 7 answers · asked by Anonymous in Science & Mathematics ➔ Physics
It's due to Rayleigh scattering, which has nothing to do with what the air is made of. Blue light from the sun scatters more easily than warmer colors like green or red, which mostly go straight down to the ground. That's why the sky looks blue, and that's why the sun doesn't look perfectly white, but very slightly yellowish.
2007-03-09 06:44:08 · answer #1 · answered by Scythian1950 7 · 0⤊ 0⤋
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.
The white light from the sun is a mixture of all colours of the rainbow. This was demonstrated by Isaac Newton, who used a prism to separate the different colours and so form a spectrum. The colours of light are distinguished by their different wavelengths. The visible part of the spectrum ranges from red light with a wavelength of about 720 nm, to violet with a wavelength of about 380 nm, with orange, yellow, green, blue and indigo between. The three different types of colour receptors in the retina of the human eye respond most strongly to red, green and blue wavelengths, giving us our colour vision.
When the air is clear the sunset will appear yellow, because the light from the sun has passed a long distance through air and some of the blue light has been scattered away. If the air is polluted with small particles, natural or otherwise, the sunset will be more red. Sunsets over the sea may also be orange, due to salt particles in the air, which are effective Tyndall scatterers. The sky around the sun is seen reddened, as well as the light coming directly from the sun. This is because all light is scattered relatively well through small angles--but blue light is then more likely to be scattered twice or more over the greater distances, leaving the yellow, red and orange colours.
2007-03-09 06:35:26 · answer #2 · answered by Anonymous · 0⤊ 0⤋
Well, this might be a crap answer to you too, but it's the straight skinny anyway --
Light coming from the sun is what's called "white light" White light contains all the colors of the rainbow. When it enters Earth's atmosphere this light is separated into its individual colors by chemical elements in the atmosphere and scattered across the sky. Nitrogen is the most abundant element in our atmosphere, and that element scatters the color blue across our sky more than the other colors. In space, there is no atmosphere to separate colors from the white light and space looks black.
2007-03-09 06:28:35 · answer #3 · answered by Chug-a-Lug 7 · 0⤊ 0⤋
as a techniques i recognize pikachu is vivid yellow. And it relies upon the place you're what shade the sky is. Like la, its rather polluted there and you will easily see all those yucky smog pollutants everywhere you bypass. whilst in comparison with Orange county its wonderful there.
2016-12-18 09:23:31 · answer #4 · answered by ? 4 · 0⤊ 0⤋
The earth's atmosphere is 78% nitrogen. The nitrogen causes the atmosphere to be blue! LOOK IT UP!!!
2007-03-09 06:31:22 · answer #5 · answered by Anonymous · 0⤊ 0⤋
Refraction.
2007-03-09 06:30:35 · answer #6 · answered by voodooprankster 4 · 0⤊ 0⤋
This site can explain it a heck of a lot better than I can:
http://www.sciencemadesimple.com/sky_blue.html
2007-03-09 06:31:32 · answer #7 · answered by theoryofgame 7 · 0⤊ 0⤋