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Asked by stephthompson to James, Ailsa, Evan, Kath, Ryan on 15 Jun 2011. This question was also asked by louisphilpott.
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Ailsa Powell answered on 14 Jun 2011:
I always thought this was due to the affects of the atmosphere absorbing and scattering the different wavelengths (colours) of light from the sun. So more blue light is scattered and that’s why the sky is blue.
Evan may know more about this though 🙂
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Evan Keane answered on 14 Jun 2011:
Ailsa is basically correct. The light from the sun comes in all colours from blue to red (do you know all the colours in between? BOYGBIV). It peaks in green (yes the sun’s emission peak in green, not yellow. I can tell you more about that if you like). What happens that the light waves have different wavelengths. The shortest is blue whose waves are 0.4 micrometeres and the longest is red which is about 0.7 micrometres. What is a micrometre? Well look how thing a piece of paper in your notebook is – that is about a millimeter. So little waves that size come from the Sun and hit atoms in the atmosphere. The atoms are just the right size so that waves about 0.4 microns bounce off them and down towards us. So we see blue light! The longer wavelengths don’t bounce off as much so the sky isn’t red. 🙂
A very important question to know the answer to!
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Ryan Ladd answered on 15 Jun 2011:
Looks like Ailsa and Evan have covered this one! Though, at the moment, I would really like the sky to be blue for just a little while, rather than grey all day long!
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Kath O'Reilly answered on 15 Jun 2011:
So that why the sky changes colour – say during a volcanic erruption? The particles in the sky change was is absorbed and what gets through…
Comments
lippy1997 commented on :
i thought it was ROYGBIV
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