I know this qestion is kind of over rated but, why is the sky blue??(seriously i want to know)?

Question

I know its a dumb question but ive always woundered! =)

Answer 1

Basically, blue light radiated from the sun is scattered by gas molecules in the air more easily than the other colors (or wavelengths, if you will), which generally pass right through it.

Answer 2

We have all wondered, at some point, why the sky is blue. Now is the time to find out - after all, someday your kids will probably ask YOU why the sky is blue! Ready?

The light that comes from the Sun is white. That white light is actually a mixture of all colors, but because they are mixed up we don't see the separate colors just the white sunlight.

As the sun's light passes through our atmosphere, the light becomes scattered by all the air and particles such smog and dust. The part of the sunlight that gets scattered the most is the blue part. That means that the blue gets separated from the other colors and we get a blue sky!

At sunset or sunrise, the sun is at a very low angle, so the rays pass through even more molecules and particles. This scatters the light even more, separating red, orange and yellow from the white light. The more particles, the more scattering.

I hope this helps :}

Answer 3

There is a physical phenomenon called Rayleigh scattering that causes light to scatter when it passes through particles that have a diameter one-tenth that of the wavelength (color) of the light. Sunlight is made up of all different colors of light, but because of the elements in the atmosphere the color blue is scattered much more efficiently than the other colors.

So when you look at the sky on a clear day, you can see the sun as a bright disk. The blueness you see everywhere else is all of the atoms in the atmosphere scattering blue light toward you. (Because red light, yellow light, green light and the other colors aren't scattered nearly as well, you see the sky as blue.)

Answer 4

Air is blue. Sounds dumb, but it's blue because of scattering of the shorter wavelengths of light from the sun. See some of the other answers for a more complete description of the scattering. Anyway, this scattered light is reflected off of the air molecules and into our eyes, so the sky looks blue to us. Similarly, a fire truck looks red because it reflects the longer wavelengths of light and absorbs the shorter wavelengths.

Answer 5

The key words to look up are Rayleigh Scattering and Mie Scattering. Seeing it on websites with graphics is better than describing it in words - as they say, a picture paints a thousand words.

In brief and over simplified: Sunlight consists of all the colours of the spectrum and each colour is made up of light of a different wavelength. As the sunlight passes through our atmosphere some of these wavelengths get scattered by the molecules in the atmosphere. Blue light is at one end of the visible spectrum and it's this part of the spectrum that gets scattered downwards to earth.

Good website with pictures and graphics -
http://hyperphysics.phy-astr.gsu.edu/hbase/atmos/blusky.html

Relevant pages on Wikipedia -
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rayleigh_scattering
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mie_theory

Answer 6

sunlight is not "invisible" or "white," it actually has several different colors, that is why you see the color of rainbow after a rain, which is actually the reflection of sunlight by water drops in the sky

so it is the same thing for the sky, it is a reflection of sunlight

Answer 7

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Answer 8

The earth is 2/3 water, and the sky is a reflection

Answer 9

THats a freakin awesome question!

Answer 10

its the color reflected to your eye