Take a look at that beautiful blue band of color
What is going on here?
Hello I am Jared, welcome to FunScienceDemos
You know a big part of science are questions and sometimes the questions are right in front of us
It does not matter how old you are young or old most people wonder "why is the sky blue"?
So to start to answer that question we need to talk about light
Now in some of our other videos we have already talked about light
So we have turned out the lights so you can better see what we are doing here
We have a light and we are passing it
through this piece of glass and you can
see in this corner most of the light
goes right through that piece of glass
and it just shows up as white light but
look what is happening over in this
corner
What is going on here?
Same light, how do I get from this corner than to
this corner?
Well as the light goes through this piece of glass that glass slows the light down and bends it and
what it bends it it puts the light over
in this corner but look what happens to that white light
That white light gets
slowed down and bent and now I can see
all the different colors that make up
white light
It kind of looks like a rainbow because that is exactly what happens in the sky with the rainbow
Light goes through something that slows
it down and bends it
What is that something in the sky?
Well it is raindrops!
So all we did there is passed light through a piece of glass and
that slowed it down and bent it
It is pretty neat to think that light is
actually made up of all these different colors
Even light from the Sun is made
up of red orange yellow green blue indigo and violet
We just have to slow
it down and bend it so that we can see those colors
So it is not a piece of glass up in the sky that is bending the light and slowing it down
We have our
earth and through science we have
discovered that surrounding our earth is
a layer of different gases that
scientists call the atmosphere and it is
those gases that slow the light down and
bend it so that we can see that blue
color
Take a look at this picture
This is our earth and what I want you to
look at and we are gonna zoom in so you
can take a closer look is that blue band
of color right on the edge of our atmosphere
This is a picture of our
Earth taken from outer space
Here is our Earth down here
This is the Sun these
white things here are clouds and look
again at that blue band along our atmosphere
That is what we are gonna take a closer look at
So this is a setup that
we are going to use to demonstrate why
the sky is blue but before we get to
this let us explain what is going on here
To do this demonstration we had to
figure out something that would act just
like our atmosphere that slows the light
down and bends it to the blue color
That is why the sky is blue and to do
that we have tried so many different things
We looked online people talked
about adding milk to water to create an
atmosphere like condition that slows the
light down and bends it so you get this blue color
We have tried adding salt to water and
cornstarch to water and sugar to water
and powdered milk to water and we tried
using glue sticks
we have tried using everything but the
results really were not that great until
we tried making up our own little batch
of unflavored gelatin and when we mixed
up our gelatin and we put it in all
different containers to see what would
happen we found some really cool results
and that is what we are gonna look at now
A big part of FunScienceDemos is that we want to use materials that everybody has
or anybody can get ahold of so we hope that you try this on your own at home
So we have turned all the lights out and take a look at what is happening
We are passing our light through this glass in gelatin
and that glass and gelatin is slowing
the light down and bending it so I get a
beautiful blue color I am getting some
yellows down here and we will talk about
that later but this is the blue just
like our sky just like the atmosphere
and our sky slows the light down and
bends it so we can see that blue color
the gelatin and the glass are slowing
the light down and bending it so we can
see this blue color
I am going to bring in this round ball which
will act like our Earth just hold it
right on the edge so you can compare and
you can see the blue edge set up just
like our atmosphere in sky
So as simple as we can explain this, the light is passing through the gelatin and the glass
or our atmosphere and it is being slowed down and bent so that we can see that blue color
That is why the sky is
blue but what about this yellow
Well as that light travels through more of our
atmosphere more of the gelatin it is
slowing the light down even more, bending it so now I see a different color
I see yellows and reds and oranges and
that is why the sunsets are different colors
So our secret recipe in trying
to demonstrate why the sky is blue is
nothing more than a batch of unflavored
gelatin and the cool thing about
unflavored gelatin is once it sets up I
can put it in any container and I can
try passing light through that container
I can hold it upside down and I can see what happens
Mix up a batch put it in a container let
it set up try passing light through that
container and see if you can get the
gelatin to slow the light down and bend
it to blue
Science is so cool!
If you want to learn more about light
check out some of our other videos or
our video description
Thanks for
watching
