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

I've seen this question many times. This is my simple explanation. There is no such thing as a SKY. What you see is the rays of light that come from the sun. There are several colors, but the atmosphere (the air above us) makes it look blue. What color is the sky at night?

Answer 3

The sky is blue because the gas molecules in the atmosphere absorb much of the shorter wavelength light.

Answer 4

What you see as far as color is a function of the light, and at what angle it comes in...

That's why sunsets are red/orange, and during daylight, the sky "appears" blue...to the colorblind, they never see a blue sky, just gray.

Answer 5

It's a reflection of the oceans to the sky.

Answer 6

The particles in the atmosphere absorb the other colours and refract blue. I remebember this from school, never understood it though.

Answer 7

It's the reflection off of the ocean.

Answer 8

It isn't... but of course you knew that.

Answer 9

http://answers.yahoo.com/question/index;_ylt=AgGmv0l6pmfBSdmjmMBlQk9IzKIX?qid=1005121102526


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