Why is the Sky blue?
Carley D.
Welcome !!
Have you ever looked up and wondering why is the sky blue?
Well for this project I went into detail to really find out why
the sky is blue. My website goes into great detail explaining
why the sky is blue. You can easily navigate through my
website to find the answer and diagrams explaining this
question. Enjoy!!
Table of Contents
Table of Contents
Rayleigh
Scattering
Why Not
Violet?
The Tyndall
Effect
Vocabulary
Welcome !!
Concluding…
Graph
Related
Links =)
Rayleigh Scattering
Table of
Contents
The blue color of the sky is mainly do to a certain effect called Rayleigh Scattering.
Rayleigh Scattering is when light moves through the atmosphere, most of the longer
wavelengths pass straight through. Little of the red, orange and yellow light is affected by
the air.
It’s a physical phenomenon that causes the light to scatter when it passes through particles
that have a diameter one-tenth of that of the wavelength of the light. Sunlight is made up of
all different colors of light, but because of the elements in the atmosphere the color blue is
scattered much more efficiently than the other colors.
The Tyndall Effect
Table of
Contents
The Tyndall Effect is similar to Rayleigh Scattering.
The first steps towards correctly explaining the colour of the
sky were taken by John Tyndall in 1859. He discovered that
when light passes through a clear fluid holding tiny particles in
the air, the shorter blue wavelengths are shown more strongly
than the red.
Why not violet?
Table of
Contents
Why not violet??
If smaller wavelengths are shown more strongly, then there is a debatable question as to
why the sky appears blue and not violet, the color with the smallest visible wavelength.
The visible spectrum of light projection from the sun is not the same at all
wavelengths, and additionally is absorbed by the high atmosphere, so there is less violet in
the light. Our eyes are also less sensitive to violet. -Yet a rainbow shows that there remains
a significant amount of visible light shown as indigo and violet beyond the blue. The rest of
the answer is in the way our vision works. We have three types of color receptors in our
retina.
They are red, blue and green because they respond the strongest to light at those
wavelengths. As they are stimulated in different proportions, our visual system constructs
the colors we see.
Concluding…
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Concluding that the sky is blue for two main reasons those
being, Rayleigh Scattering and The Tyndall Effect. These are
basically saying that light reflects and when it does the color
blue shows up the strongest out of ROYGBIV.
Table of
Contents
Vocabulary
Table of
Contents
Rayleigh Scattering-the scattering of light by particles that are very small in
relation to the wavelength of the light, and in which the intensity of the
scattered light varies inversely with the fourth power of the wavelength.
Tyndall Effect-the phenomenon in which light is scattered by very small
particles in its path; it makes a beam of light visible; the scattered light is
mainly blue
Suspension-the state in which the particles of a substance are mixed with a
fluid but are un-dissolved.
John Tyndall-Irish-born British physicist known for his work on the
transparency of gases and the absorption by gases of radiant heat.
Related Links =)
Table of
Contents
Why is the sky blue? By Science Made Simple
– This webpage has lots of information about the sky and certain aspects of why it’s
blue. It also has information about sunsets and the color patterns involved in
them as well as rainbows.
Why is the Sky blue?
– This webpage has a lot of information on why the sky is blue. Including the
Rayleigh Scattering and the Tyndall Effect. It also has some great images and
some more information also about sunsets and color effects and the sky.
How Stuff Works-Why is the Sky blue?
– This webpage had lots of information about why the sky is blue and also had
many links to many other un-answered science related questions.