The sky is blue because sunlight reaching Earth’s atmosphere gets scattered. As it travels through the air, tiny oxygen and nitrogen molecules scatter light at shorter wavelengths such as blue and violet more so than red and orange wavelengths.
When blue light hits gas molecules, it rebounds off them at right angles and your eyes interpret this color as being blue.
Rayleigh Scattering
One of the most frequently asked questions by children is why is the sky blue. There are various incorrect theories floating around, but there’s only one correct response: Rayleigh Scattering.
White light from the Sun contains every hue in its visible spectrum from red through violet. As it passes through Earth’s atmosphere, this light becomes scattered by air molecules absorbing and reflecting it back to your eyes – an effect known as Rayleigh scattering (named for Lord Rayleigh who first described it in 1870). Rayleigh scattering occurs when oscillating electric fields hit molecules or atoms of gas whereby their vibrating energy causes particles to vibrate or “dance,” emitting radiation that we perceive as color radiation – just as leaves or other objects reflect back the sunlight’s colors back towards your eyes!
Rayleigh scattering is most prevalent with short wavelength lighting such as blue and violet hues, due to how this wavelength has more of an impactful influence on air molecules’ vibrations, leading it to bounce off more frequently, thus dispersing wider than when using longer wavelengths – this effect causes our eyes to be most sensitive to these shorter wavelengths, giving the sky its distinct hue.
Contrast this with light having longer wavelengths such as red. Such light travels more directly toward your eyes, giving the sky more of a neutral shade of white.
As is to be expected, the color of the sky varies based on time of day and location on Earth. For instance, Mars boasts an earth-hued hue due to permanent dust clouds present there; when sundown or sunrise arrives more of its light has passed through our atmosphere and thus appears redder in hue to our eyes.
Space travel without atmosphere means the sky appears black – so be sure to bring sunglasses on any astronautical voyages!
Reflection
When sunlight strikes the Earth’s atmosphere, its energy can either be reflected back outward or scattered away by air molecules composed mostly of nitrogen and oxygen molecules in our surroundings. These air molecules interact with visible light wavelengths differently depending on their size and how often light hits against them; blue and violet wavelengths tend to scatter more than others as a result of Rayleigh Scattering — making our eyes perceive the sky as blue regardless of other colors hitting it!
Humidity, pollution and dust in the air all can have an effect on the color of the sky. Countries nearer the equator tend to experience more humid air with higher cloud cover compared with colder climates like Australia; this leads to grayer skies. Dusty or polluted skies can even make things appear redder than normal.
Sunlight can refract, or change speed as it passes through different materials, such as when passing through water with a prism slid across it. By shifting from blue light to other wavelengths at different speeds and seeing their colors move at various speeds simultaneously reveals their distinct wavelengths and wavelengths. Our eyes perceive white light as blue while other hues as red due to gas molecules reflecting light back off themselves instead of absorbing it directly.
At sunrise or sunset, when the sun is low in the sky, its light must travel a longer journey through the atmosphere to reach our eyes. This requires more oxygen and nitrogen molecules to come into contact with its rays – potentially scattering their shorter wavelengths of violet and blue light away from your eyes while yellow, orange and red wavelengths take their direct path directly toward them.
Due to this phenomenon, dawn and dusk skies appear bluer when viewing from further away than they do during daylight hours when sunlight is high in the sky.
Prisms
Prisms are solid three-dimensional (3D) structures with flat sides. Additionally, they have an uniform cross section throughout their length; cutting one of their ends at its base would look just like another end. A prism may take on any form imaginable: triangular, rectangular, square or even octagonal shapes are possible but it cannot be circular due to having curved sides.
A prism may contain different colored surfaces known as refraction layers that create rainbow-like effects when light passes through it. A prism’s color can be determined by its index of refraction – the ratio between speed of wavelength passage through it and velocity; violet light has the highest index followed by blue and then red wavelengths with lower numbers representing greater transparency of prisms.
Refraction of light inside a prism can cause its colors to separate and spread out – this process is known as Tyndall scattering. As light scatters it breaks up into its component parts with blue light being scattered more widely than other hues; hence sunsets being yellow because sunlight must travel long distances through air before being scattered back out again by air molecules into our eyes as yellow light.
As light is scattered it reaches the base of a prism where index of refraction decreases; here, the spectrum begins to curve down towards its origin point forming rainbows in the sky after rainstorms as raindrops act as prisms to spread light around.
Prisms are used in an assortment of optical devices and instruments, including microscopes, telescopes, submarine periscopes and binoculars. Prisms can be used to inverse, rotate or invert images as well as produce plane-polarized light from non-polarized light waves. Prisms may be made out of materials like glass, plastic or metal and some (such as the Fresnel prism) may even require pressing on to form its shape while others must be ground into place before use.
Rainbows
One of the most frequently asked questions from children is, “Why is the sky blue?” Answers vary; from reflecting ocean waves, oxygen being blue-colored gas etc. However, the correct explanation lies much simpler: earth’s atmosphere contains gas molecules which scatter different wavelengths of light differently – blue and violet wavelengths tend to be scattered more strongly than other colors.
Effects become more noticeable as one moves further from the Sun, due to light having to travel through more atmosphere. Therefore, sunlight becomes more likely to be scattered and its color fades gradually toward the horizon; hence why when standing before a rainbow, red bands become visible at around 42.2 degrees only.
Rainbows are created when sunlight passes into and gets reflected off water droplets. As light passes into these droplets, its path gets redirected at an angle determined by Snell’s Law which causes it to bend, giving rise to its distinct appearance as a rainbow. Redirected light hits back of droplet at different angle than front creating second reflection.
As soon as a second reflection occurs, the light from its initial direction is refracted in different directions again, creating the rainbow effect. This continues until all rays of light have been separated into their individual hues: red light is directed upward to form the top half while violet and blue forms its base.
Have you ever noticed how rainbows tend to take the shape of a half circle? This is due to the red part of the spectrum only being visible at an angle of 42 degrees to your eyes, as shown here. Though other colors such as yellow and purple exist as well, they’re rarely noticeable as their path is often directed downward at lower angles than red’s.