Ah yes, one of those questions that every parent gets asked at some time or another! The blue colour of the sky is due to something called Rayleigh scattering, or in lay-mans terms, it is all down to light wavelengths passing through the atmosphere. As light moves through the atmosphere, most of the longer wavelengths pass straight through. Little of the red, orange and yellow light is affected by the air. However, much of the shorter wavelength light is absorbed by the gas molecules. The absorbed blue light is then radiated in different directions. It gets scattered all around the sky. Whichever direction you look, some of this scattered blue light reaches you. Because you see the blue light from everywhere overhead, the sky looks completely blue. When you look closer at the horizon, the sky appears much paler in colour. To reach you, the scattered blue light must pass through more air. Some of it gets scattered away again in other directions. Less blue light reaches your eyes. The colour of the sky near the horizon appears white to the human eye. So now you can very intelligent whenever a child asks you why the sky is blue!
Scattering of light is the basic reason for blue sky since blue ie voilet which has the shortest wavelength of a white light similar to sunlight which scaters more than the other colour during day except early morning and late evening the sky appears blue but in those exceptional condition the sky look red in colour because all the blue scatters away since red light has a longer wavelength it reaches our eyes other light scatter away this is because the distance from earth and sun will be maximum when it is at exteme position
Why the sky is blue: SummaryThe sky is blue because blue light from the sun strikes the air molecules and scatters, and our eyes perceive it as blue.Why the sky is blue: Short SummaryThe blue in sunlight collides with air molecules and our eyes see it as blue.Why the sky is blue: CondensedSunlight collides with air, scatters blue wavelengths.Why the sky is blue: Ultra-Condensed.Because it is. Stop asking.
The blue color of the sky is due to Rayleigh scattering. As light moves through the atmosphere, most of the longer wavelengths pass straight through. Little of the red, orange and yellow light is affected by the air.
However, much of the shorter wavelength light is absorbed by the gas molecules. The absorbed blue light is then radiated in different directions. It gets scattered all around the sky. Whichever direction you look, some of this scattered blue light reaches you. Since you see the blue light from everywhere overhead, the sky looks blue.
Unless you have a cloudy day (in which case you will not see anything blue anyway), the sky ought to be black as Arthur Wright says. After all, you are looking at clear gas. In fact though, the shorter wavelengths of light are scattered when they strike those gaseous molecules, what you are looking at is the "scatter". The shorter wavelengths that scatter are at the blue end of the spectrum. Light waves at the red end of the spectrum scatter much less and therefore are not seen when you look at the sky.
Rayleigh scattering is the main factor for blue color. The blue light absorbed from the sun by the gas molecules gives us blue sky look. For more information, why the sky is blue please visit the following link. Blue Sky
A clear cloudless day-time sky is blue because molecules in the air scatter blue light from the sun more than they scatter red light. When we look towards the sun at sunset, we see red and orange colours because the blue light has been scattered out and away from the line of sight. The white light from the sun is a mixture of all colours of the rainbow. This was demonstrated by Isaac Newton, who used a prism to separate the different colours and so form a spectrum. The colours of light are distinguished by their different wavelengths. The visible part of the spectrum ranges from red light with a wavelength of about 720 nm, to violet with a wavelength of about 380 nm, with orange, yellow, green, blue and indigo between. The three different types of colour receptors in the retina of the human eye respond most strongly to red, green and blue wavelengths, giving us our colour vision.
Because of the sun rays it appears to be blue but when the sun goes down over the horizon or when you catch the a morning sunrise in the sky it it appears red and gold around the sun...why is it blue we can ask God...why does the ocean look blue because if you took a gallon jug out of the ocean it is far from the color blue but looking from a distance it appears to be blue. Joy
During the day time the sky appears to be Blue in colour, because of the air scattering sunlight. The sky is a portion of the atmosphere or of external space noticeable from the surface of the earth.
The blue colour emerges because of Rayleigh scattering. As light shifts through the atmosphere, the majority of the longer wavelengths pass directly through. Nevertheless, most of the shorter wavelength light is taken in by the gas molecules. As you see nearer to the horizon, the sky looks much paler in colour. To reach to the human eye the spread blue light has to pass through more air, hence some of it gets distributed away again in additional directions.
This causes less blue light to reach your eye, and so the colour of the sky close to the horizon comes into view as white.
The sunlight enters the earth atmosphere with an angle about 35 to 45 degree which makes the light look blue in colour and this happens due to divergence of light which is splitting of light into vatious colours.Since it is getting inside the atmosphere at 35-45 degrees angle the sky appears as blue to us.
The sky looks blue because the gas molecules in the air scatter light from the sun. The sun emits all colours of light, but the gas molecules in the air scatter only a section of this light (the blue colour). This means only this blue colour light gets bounced around in all the molcules of the air, making the sky look blue.
Its only the blue colours because blue light has a short wave frequency.
During the sunset the sky can also look red. This is because here the suns light is traveling further towards us, which means more of its light is scattered, which means it doesn't just appear blue.
The sky is blue because of the way the Earth's atmosphere scatters light from the sun. More blue light gets scattered than red so we see the sky as blue. At sunset the blue light is out and away from the line of sight so we see the sunset as red and orange.
It is supposed to be a mystery but people who deal with science say that its because of particles and oxygen and our eyes just perceive thet the sky is blue
The blue color of the sky is due to Rayleigh dispersion. As light travels throughout the environment, the majority of the longer wavelengths surpass directly through. Little of the red, orange and yellow light is exaggerated by the air.
Actually, the sky is not blue. The color blue you see is the reflection of the "water" canopy which surrounds the earth. The sunlight hits the canopy making the sky appear blue.
The sky is actually black like deep space but the light from the sun reflects back to us making it appear blue, just as clouds appear gray or black because the clouds are actually filtering out the light
Its not its because when the light hits the road to yours and my eyes the roads black but its really dark blue and the clouds add more white in to the sky which makes it light blue
Because all of the colors (Red, Orange, Yellow, Green, Indigo, and violet) are being absorbed. And the color Blue is what is being reflected back to our eyes. That is why the sky is blue. :)
Yes,confucious is right except the inventor of the scattering of light..it was not newton but C V Raman .he was awarded noble prize for this discovery..the principle is known as "Raman scattering of light"
The sky is blue because in the day tiime there has to be light and the clouds need an atomosphere back ground also to block the sun when it gets too hot!
Blue Sky: As light moves through the atmosphere, most of the longer wavelength radiation, such as red and orange-like colors go straight, while gas molecules mostly absorb shorter wavelengths, such as light (blue).
Well Texas,that's a difficult one. Mostly has to do with our Atmosphere,that is made up of 78% Nitrogen,21% Oxygen and whats left over are traces gas ,dust and other particles.Now how light reacts to these elements is how we get the color blue.Light is an energy that Radiates or travels in Waves.Light is a Wave of vibrating electric and magnetic fields.It is a small part of a larger vibrating electromagnetic field that we call the Electromagnetic Field.Visible light is part of the Spectrum that we can see.Like when we see a Rainbow in the sky.At one end we can see Reds & Oranges and gradually shade into Yellow,Green,Blue,Indigo & Violet.Now Red has the longest Wavelength and Violet has the Shortest.Light travels thru space in a straight line as long as it is not disturbed.As it passes thru our Atmosphere it travels in a straight line until it runs into Gases and Dust. What happens next depends on the lights wavelength and the size of the object it hits. As the light passes thru our atmosphere the longer wavelengths(the strongest,Reds & Oranges) pass right thru.They are just to stronge to be effected by whats in our Atmosphere.The shorter Wavelengths(the weakest,Blue,Indigo & Violet) are absorbed by the Gases and Molecules.The absorbed Blue lights are Radiated into different directions. It gets scattered all over the sky.Wherever you look some of the scattered light reaches you.Since you see the Blue light overhead,that is why the Sky is Blue.
The fact that the sky is blue is all due to the physical phenomenon called Rayleigh scattering, which causes the light from the sun to scatter all around when it passes through some particles in the atmosphere that have a diameter that is actually one-tenth of the wavelength of the sunlight. Sunlight is actually make up of different colors of light, ranging from red, violet, blue, green and orange, each having its own wavelength, and blue is scattered much more efficiently, due to the elements of the atmosphere and blue light having the least wavelength. All the blue light that you seen coming from the sky is actually your naked eyes deceiving you. It is actually the atoms in the atmosphere that is dispersing blue light towards you, while the rest of the lights aren't scattered that well, so blue light is more prominent amongst the lights dispersed throughout the sky.
Light always passes through space from the Sun in a straight line, unscattered and untouched. As it passes through the atmosphere, it would bounce off a occasional dust and water molecule along the way, so it will get bounced off and ricocheted off in different directions, all the different colors of the light get reflected the same way. Whatever you look at the sky, some of the blue light get radiated to your own eyes from overhead, and it appears blue in the end.
But, if you try to look closer and forward enough, you will see the sky appears to be paler than before, as it has to pass through more clouds to reach you far below, so some of the blue light would get scattered away in different directions again, so the color of the sky of the horizon appears to become white when you get closer enough.
Of course, if you were in the moon or some distant and forgotten planets, you will realize that the scenario that you seen on Earth would be completely different from what you see at the moon. The sky would actually turn black as there is no atmosphere, so no molecules to reflect any light towards your eyes, so it would turn dark.
The sky seems blue for the reason that after sunlight filters through the oxygen in the atmosphere, all other colors except blue are absorbed by the oxygen. This is the fact that color of the sky is not so blue but it is black though, is because just twenty percent of the atmosphere is oxygen.
Not all time, here's my two simple answers on this. First, the sky is blue because it is in the day time. The sunlight is more what can you see that governs the appearance of the outer space that came to be a light blue one. Second, in the night, the sky seems to be dark because the is no sunlight except the moonlight but it seems that the moonlight can lighten the sky as the sun can.
The sunlight interacting with the Earth's atmosphere makes the sky blue. He minute particles of matter and molecules of air in the atmosphere intercept and scatter the white light of the sun. A larger portion of the blue color in white light is scattered, more so than any other color because the blue wavelengths are the shortest. When the size of atmospheric particles are smaller than the wavelengths of the colors, selective scattering occurs-the particles only scatter one color and the atmosphere will appear to be that color. Blue wavelengths especially are affected, bouncing off the air particles to become visible.
Sunlight is made up of all the colors of the rainbow: Red, orange, yellow, green, blue, and violet. The gas molecules in the atmosphere interact with the sunlight before the light reaches our eyes.The gas molecules in the atmosphere scatter the higher-energy (high frequency) blue portion of the sunlight more than they scatter the lower-energy redportion of the sunlight (this is called Rayleigh scattering, named for the physicist Lord John Rayleigh). The Sun appears reddish-yellow and the sky surrounding the Sun is colored by the scattered blue waves. When the Sun is lower in the horizon (near sunrise or sunset), the sunlight must travel through a greater thickness of atmosphere than it does when it is overhead, and even more light is scattered (not just blue, but also green, yellow, and orange) before the light reaches your eyes. This makes the sun look much redder.
Well Sky is not exactly Blue, According to my opinion don't go in its complexity. Sky is Blue because God Who Created this universe wished to make it Blue.
The atmosphere is the mixture of gas molecules and other materials surrounding the earth. It is made mostly of the gases nitrogen (78%), and oxygen (21%). Argon gas and water (in the form of vapor, droplets and ice crystals) are the next most common things. There are also small amounts of other gases, plus many small solid particles, like dust, soot and ashes, pollen, and salt from the oceans. The composition of the atmosphere varies, depending on your location, the weather, and many other things. There may be more water in the air after a rainstorm, or near the ocean. Volcanoes can put large amounts of dust particles high into the atmosphere. Pollution can add different gases or dust and soot. The atmosphere is densest (thickest) at the bottom, near the Earth. It gradually thins out as you go higher and higher up. There is no sharp break between the atmosphere and space. All the info is in this site: http://www.sciencemadesimple.com/sky_blue.html
When the sunlight passes through the atmosphere it is colored by the types of gases it passes through such as oxygen which gives the blue tinge I am told.
It is due to the raman effect that the sky is blue, that is it is due to the scattering of light and since blue has the least wavelength it get scattered the most
