Here, let’s look on curious question, Why is the sky blue?

One of the common questions of our childhood would be this, why is the sky blue? You all might have experienced this by asking to your parents or asked by your children.

So, Let’s see what causes the sky to look blue? Let’s get started.

Let’s see the basics of the light. The light we get from the sun is actually made of all the colors of rainbow- violet indigo, blue, green, yellow, orange and red (VIBGYOR) mixed together.

All light passes in the straight line unless it is disturbed on its way and does reflection, scattering or bending. When the white light from the sun reaches the earth’s atmosphere, it is scattered by the tiny molecules of gas which are mostly nitrogen and oxygen in the air. This scattering effect is called Rayleigh Scattering.

Scattering of light

Scattering is a process in which molecules absorb sunlight and re-emit it in various directions with different intensity. It is found to be stronger for shorter wavelengths. Blue light waves are shorter than any other colors and has higher frequencies.

Beam of light can be seen through a colloid and this phenomenon is called Tyndall Effect. Tyndall Effect is due to scattering of light. We must know that not all colors of the light are scattered equally.

When all the colors of the light pass through the air, the blue color causes charged particles to oscillate faster than the red color. Because different colors have different wavelengths.  Shorter wavelengths are more scattered than larger wavelengths. Blue color has the smallest wavelengths so it is scattered the most and red color has the largest wavelengths so it is scattered the least. Among the seven colors, the blue and violet color has the shortest wavelengths So the blue- violet colors are scattered more than the red-orange colors.

Even though violet is scattered more when compared to blue due to its shorter wavelength, our eyes are more sensitive to blue color than to violet. This is why the sky is blue the day!

That is so simple. Hope you got some information about this. Don’t be scared when someone asks you about this. Just tell the same information.

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