why is the sky blue?

Answer 1

The sky appears blue to us on a clear day, because the atoms of nitrogen and oxygen in the atmosphere separate the suns white light into its many colors, and scatter them throughout the atmosphere.

The wavelength of the blue light scatters better than the rest, predominates over the other colors in the light spectrum, and makes the sky appear blue to us.

The scientific name for this phenomenon is the Tyndall effect, more commonly known as Rayleigh scattering.

This phenomenon describes the way in which light physically scatters when it passes through particles in the earths atmosphere that are 1/10th in diameter of the color of the light. The light spectrum ranges in wavelength from red to violet, and, since the wavelength of the blue light passes through the particles with greater ease than the wavelengths of the other colors of light, the sky appear blue to the naked eye.

The human eye has three types of light receptors, known as cones, located in the retina. The cones are either considered to be red, or blue, or green, based upon their strong response to light at these wavelengths. As light stimulates these receptors, our vision translates the signals into the colors we see.

When gazing at the sky, the red cones respond to the small amounts of red light scattered, and even less strongly to the orange and yellow wavelengths. Although green cones respond to yellow, their response to scattered green and green-blue wavelengths is stronger. Finally, colors near the strongly scattered blue wavelengths stimulate the blue receptors.

In short, the skylight stimulates the red and green cones almost equally, while stimulating the blue cones more strongly. For these reasons, our vision naturally adjusts as clearly as possible to separate colors.

Answer 2

The sky is blue during the day because of how the light waves from the sun are deflected upon entering earth's atmosphere. When light rays travel freely through space then collide with the earth's atmosphere, the air works as a prism, separating and altering the speed and frequency of the waves. When these refracted light waves hit our eyes at a certain speed, we perceive the color blue. But, as you will notice at dawn and dusk, the times of the day when the sun is at more of a horizontal angle, the sky takes on many magnificent shades of purple, orange, yellow, and red. The difference in how our eyes precieve these colors is based on the frequency of light waves after refracted by the atmosphere.

The main theme being not "why is the sky blue"?, but rather "why do our eyes perceive the sky as being blue". Its all a matter of our eyes' perception of the sky.

Answer 3

You may already know that sunlight is made up of all the colors of the rainbow: red, orange, yellow, green, blue, and violet. You probably also know that sunlight has to pass through our atmosphere before it reaches our eyes. The gas molecules in the atmosphere break up, or "scatter," the sunlight into its many parts. But they scatter some parts more effectively than others.

Different colors of light have different energies, or wavelengths. Red light has a long wavelength and a lower energy; blue light has a short wavelength and a higher energy. The gas molecules in the atmosphere scatter the higher-energy blue wavelengths better than the red wavelengths. So the sky looks blue.

This also explains the brilliant colors of the sunset. Sunlight at dusk or dawn has to travel through an especially thick layer of atmosphere before it reaches your eyes (it's at an angle). As a result, even more higher-energy light is scattered, leaving those beautiful reds, yellows, and oranges.

- From http://ask.yahoo.com/20010518.html

Answer 4

The sky actually is black in colour.When the sunlight enters the atmosphere of earth,it reflects the colour of the sea as 70% of the earth's surface is water and the sky appears to be blue.

Answer 5

Dear Nishita, good question and here is the scientific answer you were looking for. 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 proportional 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.

Answer 6

This is not my strong point but I am certain that it reflects the tiny water particles.

Dexter T

Answer 7

Atmosphere, some planets got it, some don't.

Answer 8

That is the color that we percieve when we look at all the elements that make up our atmosphere.

Answer 9

because it reflects from the water...see

Answer 10

It's grey here.