the sky is blue?

Question

i dont no if the sky is blue or not?

Answer 1

A good question to ponder over. Well the sky is not blue but it appears to be blue. When the sun's white light comes into the atmosphere, it is separated into 7 different colours. Violet light is one of them and it scatters the most therefore we see the scattered violet light which appears blue. If there would have been no atmosphere on earth then the sky would have appeared dark.

Answer 2

This question has been asked over 4000 times, and I've prepared a simple answer, without too much science:

The correct answer is that the blue light is scattered by the air molecules in the atmosphere (referred to as Rayleigh scattering). The blue wavelength is scattered more, because the scatteing effect increases with the inverse of the fourth power of the incident wavelength.

OK, but I've known science graduates who don't understand what this means.
Here's my attempt at an answer without too much physics:

I think most people know that sunlight is made up of light of several different wavelengths, and can be split up into the colours of the rainbow. Blue light has the shorter wavelength, and red the longest wavelength.

When sunlight hits the molecules in the atmosphere, the light strikes the molecules and is absorbed, causing the molecules to vibrate and give off, or 're-emit' the light. It's not the same as reflection, but the effect is similar. The molecules in the air are much smaller than the wavelength of visible light, but because the blue wavelength is shorter and more energetic, it reacts much more with the air molecules than the red and yellow wavelengths; which tend to pass straight through.

Because the blue radiation is re-emitted from the air molecules in all directions ('scattered'), it seems to us looking from the ground that the blue light is coming from everywhere; hence the sky seems blue.

Near sunset, because of the low angle of the sunlight, we see more of the red and yellow wavelendth passing straight through, hence the colours of the setting sun.

BTW: The sky isn't blue because of a reflection of the sea; its the other way round, although the blue colour of the sea is mostly caused by the water molecules scattering the blue light, in a similar way. This effect is even stronger with ice; which results in the intense blue colour we see if we look down a crevasse in a glacier, or down a hole in the snow made by a ski stock..

For a complete, scientific explqanation, look up 'blue sky' in Wikipedia.

Answer 3

Well, the first thing to do is to note the time. Is it daytime or nighttime.

Once you have determined that, look up. If it is daytime, the sky should be blue (if there are no clouds obscuring your view). If it is nighttime, the sky will be black (again, assuming there are no clouds obscuring your view). The twinkly lights you see are called "stars". If there is a big bright object in the sky it will either be the sun (daytime) or the moon (nighttime).

For the scientific explanation on why the daytime sky is blue, druid has the exactly correct answer. Give druid the 10 points.

Answer 4

there's a common misconception that the ocean reflects on the sky making it blue, but how do you think deserts have clear blue skies?

the sky is blue because of the skylight or sky radiation..
it is the absorption and the scattering of solar beams, so normally during the day,, it would look blue, whIle in the near afternoon-evening, the sky turns red because the blue light waves from the sun become scattered because of the tangent positioning of the sun to that point in the earth and thus leaves the yellow and red waves which makes the afternoon red..

In the evening, the sky is black because there is no skylight or sky radiation..

Hope this helps!

Answer 5

No the sky is not blue. The sky has no color. When white light (light with all the colors of the spectrum in it is called white) from the sun hits the earths atmosphere, the various wavelengths of light are refracted and absorbed by the various molocules in the way. It just so happens that the light absorbed first is in the shorter wavelengths such as blue. This is the color we see. On the ocean floor, only the longest wavelengths are left, so many fish in the mid level ocean will be red if they want to be seen. Sculpins, Crabs, Lobsters.

Answer 6

<>"The blue color of the sky is caused by the scattering of sunlight off the molecules of the atmosphere. This scattering, called Rayleigh scattering, is more effective at short wavelengths (the blue end of the visible spectrum). Therefore the light scattered down to the earth at a large angle with respect to the direction of the sun's light is predominantly in the blue end of the spectrum."

http://hyperphysics.phy-astr.gsu.edu/hbase/atmos/blusky.html

Answer 7

Just another daily dose of the plethora of questions all asking "why is the sky blue?"

Answer 8

the sky is blue because i want it to be blue

Answer 9

The sky has no color. The reflection of the 75% of the world's water reflects the blue color of the sky.

Answer 10

the sky is blue because of the thickness and composition of the atmosphere. It acts like a prism.