Have you ever looked up and wondered, why is the sky blue? It’s one of those simple questions with a very cool science answer!
The sky looks blue because of something called Rayleigh scattering. Sunlight may look white to our eyes, but it’s actually made of many colors—like red, orange, yellow, green, blue, and violet. These colors travel in waves, and each wave has a different length.
When the sunlight enters Earth’s atmosphere, it hits tiny gas molecules like nitrogen and oxygen. These molecules scatter the light in different directions. But here’s the interesting part – blue light has shorter waves, so it gets scattered more than the others. That’s why we see a blue sky most of the time.
You might be asking – if violet is even shorter than blue, why don’t we see a purple sky? Great question! It’s because our eyes are more sensitive to blue, and the violet light gets absorbed more by the atmosphere.
At sunrise and sunset, the sky can turn red, orange, or pink. That’s because the sun is lower in the sky, so the light passes through more of the atmosphere. The blue light gets scattered out of the way, and the reds and oranges take over.
So next time someone asks you why the sky is blue, you’ll know it’s all thanks to sunlight, the atmosphere, and a bit of science magic!
souce : livescience.com
