• Question: why is the sky blue?

    Asked by to Andrei, Ekbal, Gemma, Helen, Ruth on 17 Jun 2014. This question was also asked by .
    • Photo: Ekbal Hussain

      Ekbal Hussain answered on 17 Jun 2014:

      Hi syenna!

      That is a very good question and one that baffled scientists for a very long time! A huge error people make is that the beautiful blue colour is a result of reflection from the surface of our oceans, however this is not the case.

      Believe it or not the sky is actually made up of all the colours of the rainbow! You see… light travels in waves, these waves can either be short and choppy, or they can be more long and gentle waves.

      White light from the sun reaches our earth and is scattered in all directions by particles in the earths atmosphere, as blue light has the shorter and more choppy waves compared to the other colours it is scattered much much more! Which is why we see the sky as blue most of the time!

      So why don’t we see the rest of those beautiful rainbow colours? Well in actual fact we do! Think about how red the sky gets during a sunset!

      Ekbal

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