Why is the sky blue?

Answer 1

The sky is blue partly because air scatters short-wavelength light in preference to longer wavelengths. Combined, these effects scatter (bend away in all directions) some short, blue light waves while allowing almost all longer, red light waves to pass straight through. When we look toward a part of the sky not near the sun, the blue color we see is blue light waves scattered down toward us from the white sunlight passing through the air overhead. Near sunrise and sunset, most of the light we see comes in nearly tangent to the Earth's surface, so that the light's path through the atmosphere is so long that much of the blue and even yellow light is scattered out, leaving the sun rays and the clouds it illuminates red.

Scattering and absorption are major causes of the attenuation of radiation by the atmosphere. Scattering varies as a function of the ratio of the particle diameter to the wavelength of the radiation. When this ratio is less than about one-tenth, Rayleigh scattering occurs in which the scattering coefficient varies inversely as the fourth power of the wavelength. At larger values of the ratio of particle diameter to wavelength, the scattering varies in a complex fashion described, for spherical particles, by the Mie theory; at a ratio of the order of 10, the laws of geometric optics begin to apply.

Answer 2

The sky is blue because light is scattered propotional to the fourth power of the frequency. That means that the higher frequencies are scattered much more than the lower frequencies. As a result the frequencies left over are in the blue reange and lower. As we see the sun through more atmosphere - as in the late afternoon or early evening the scattering is more prnounced becasue the light actually travels through more air so the red light is what we see. On a heavily polluted or smokey day the sun appears very much near the red end of the spectrum.

Answer 3

The air molecules (N2 and O2) deviates and disperses more the short waves (UV and blue photons) than the longer ones. So the light in the same direction where the Sun would be, comes more yellow, and the blue ligh comes from everywhere of the sky. When the Sun is near the horizon, the blue light would be deviate a lot to the space, the orange light come from everywhere, and the deep red, come direct from the Sun.

Answer 4

The amount of scattering is inversely proportional to the fourth power of the wavelength. this is known as the Rayleigh scattering law.Hence the shorter wavelengths are scattered much more than the longer wavelengths.The blue appearance of the sky is due to scattering of sunlight by the atmosphere.According to Rayleighs scattering law, Blue light is scattered to a greater extent than red light.This scattered radiation causes the sky to appear blue.

At sunrise and sunset the rays from the sun have to travel a larger part of the atmosphere than at noon.Therefore most of the blue light is scattered away and only the red light which is least scattered reaches the observer.Hence the sun appears reddish at sunrise and sunset.

Answer 5

for knowing this answer you should know the basics of optics.As we know the light has seven colours,out of these seven colours blue colour is most reflective and has more energy.so when the blue colour collide with the dust particle, present in sky,it get reflected and get distributed.

Answer 6

because one of the gases which composes air (i think oxygen?) is blue, but because it is a gas and significantly spread out, it does not appear blue unless you are looking through a great thickness of it, eg, the atmosphere.

Answer 7

Its because you think its blue. Its actually red with a green tint.

Answer 8

Because blue in sunlight collides with air molecules and scatters. That makes our eyes see it as blue.

If you want to know more about this, enter these links:
http://math.ucr.edu/home/baez/physics/General/BlueSky/blue_sky.html
http://www.sciencemadesimple.com/sky_blue.html

Answer 9

it reflects the colour of the sea.

Answer 10

because it is