• Question: why is the sky blue

    Asked by anon-244585 to Ondrej, Jordan, Eleanor, Ed, Christine, Alice on 18 Mar 2020.
    • Photo: Edward Banks

      Edward Banks answered on 18 Mar 2020:

      So light from the Sun is made up of all different colours. When this multicoloured light hits the atmosphere, and all those pesky particles get in the way, some of it gets scattered about. Now the shorter the wavelength of light, the more likely it is to get scattered; and blue has a shorter wavelength than other colours. So it gets scattered more.
      This means that most of the colours of light will pass by and carry on to wherever they were going, but a higher percentage of blue light will get scattered and end up heading towards your eyes; which makes the sky look blue.

    • Photo: Eleanor Jones

      Eleanor Jones answered on 18 Mar 2020:

      A great explanation from Ed. It’s all to do with a area of physics called optics.

Comments