Have you ever looked up at a beautiful
bright blue sky and asked yourself, why
does it look that way? I'm Nick welcome
to All Our Questions were I search the
internet for questions that we all want
answers to and I answer them. Today's
question is, "Why is the sky blue?" Were
gonna find out and we're starting right
now! When the light from the Sun hits the
Earth's atmosphere it gets scattered, bent and
reflected all over the place as it
passes through gases and molecules that
we have in our air. Even though the light from
the Sun looks white it's actually made
up of all the colors of the rainbow and
our atmosphere acts as a prism of sorts
to separate the colors as they come through
our atmosphere. Since blue light has a
shorter wavelength  it actually get
scattered around the most and for
clarification, a wavelength is simply
the distance between waves. Think of it
this way:
red light is a longer wavelength so as
it comes through the atmosphere it doesn't hit
as many gases and particles. Blue on the
other hand has a lot more waves so
it's prone to hit more particles and
gases in the atmosphere. Violet actually
get scattered the most and technically
the sky is violet. But the 6 to 7 million
cones and our eyes that are responsible
for color sensitivity are more sensitive
to the color blue. So combined with the
scattering of light, our visual system
hooks us up with the beautiful blue sky
that we see when we go outside on a nice
sunny day. Instead of a beautiful violet
sky. We can still obviously see violet in
rainbows and violent in the sky but our
eyes are just more sensitive to the blue
light. If we didn't see the violent in
the sky or indigo in the sky then it
would have more of a green tinge to it
which would probably still be really
cool to look at. Yep, sure would!
Without getting off track, if someone
asked you why the sky is blue the short
answer that you can give them is: the sky
is blue because the way the light from
the Sun interacts with the gases and
the itty bitty particles in the Earth's atmosphere, mostly
nitrogen and oxygen. And because our eyes are
more sensitive to the blue color
spectrum than they are to the others but
what if they say something like, "alright
then smarty pants why does it get orange
or red in the morning or evening then...huh?
Well that's easy, when the sun's going up
or it's coming down on the horizon the
light has to pass through 38% more
atmosphere in order to get to the same
viewpoint as it would if it was coming
from directly above us. Because of that,
by the time the light hits us the blue
has  already been scared away to be viewed
by somebody else, somewhere else on the
planet.
This leaves our point of view with the
very stunning, and very romantic, longer
wavelength colors of red, yellow and
orange. At night the blue, red and every
other color go away leaving us a
stunning view of the universe because
we're on the dark side of the earth and the
sun's rays are no longer directly
interacting with the atmosphere that
were observing. So next time you go out
on a nice sunny day you can look up at
the bright blue sky and you can enjoy it a
little bit more because now you know why
the sky is blue. If this video was
helpful or informative in any way give
it a thumbs up. Let me know how you like
to spend your bright blue sunny days down
in the comments below.
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you so much for watching,
I'll see you next
time!
