• Question: Why is the sky blue

    Asked by aknox537 to Pete, Rebecca, SallyB, Sally, Sian on 17 Jun 2010 in Categories: . This question was also asked by andyholder.
    • Photo: Sally Fenton

      Sally Fenton answered on 16 Jun 2010:

      Basically it is to do with how the light from the sun is scattered in the earths atmosphere.

      The light from the Sun looks white. But it is really made up of all the colors of the rainbow and it travels in waves.
      All light waves travel in a straight line unless something gets in the way. If somethine gets in the way it can either reflect it (like a mirror), bend it (like a prism), or scatter it (like molecules of the gases in the atmosphere).

      When the sunlight reaches earth’s atmosphere it hits the gases (nitogen, oxygen etc.) in the in the air and this causes the light to scatter in all directions (because the gases and paticles in the air have blocked the light waves!). Blue is scattered more than other colors because it travels as shorter, smaller waves…so more blue waves reach the gases and particles to be scatterd! This is why we see a blue sky most of the time.

    • Photo: Rebecca Randell

      Rebecca Randell answered on 16 Jun 2010:

      Its the angle at what the light refracts from the sun. …. This is what my office mate tells me!!! I don’t know to much about the earth. sorry

    • Photo: Peter Styring

      Peter Styring answered on 17 Jun 2010:

      The sun is a very strong light source and when it passes through the earth’s atmosphere it gets scattered by the molecules of gass and particles. The particles scatter the blue light best and these are directed towards earch. The other waverlengths of light (green, orange, red, etc) aren’t scattered so well so you see mainly blue. But think of the colour of the sky at sunset. It’s also the angle of the sun towards the earth that affects the scattering colour.

      Here’s a question for you. What colour is snow?

    • Photo: Sally Barber

      Sally Barber answered on 17 Jun 2010:

      It just the way that we see it. The blue colour is all of the atoms in the atmosphere scattering blue light toward you. Red light, yellow light, green light and the other colors aren’t scattered nearly as well, so we see the sky as blue.

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