Why is the sky blue?

@shelagh77 (3643)
December 3, 2007 6:21pm CST
I know it is sometimes grey and sometimes full of cloud but primarily the sky is blue and I wondered why as air itself is perfectly clear, isn't it?
6 responses
@didi13 (2926)
• Romania
13 Mar 11
Sunlight contains all colors of the rainbow, graduated red, yellow, green to blue and violet. Each color has a specific wavelength. Blue has a smaller wavelength and blue light travels so fast. When the sun meets our rich oxygen atmosphere, oxygen molecules scatter the short wave length faster than the others, with greater length. We can say that oxygen and blue are made ??for each other. So, on sunny days the sky is blue, it is possible that particles in the air scatter blue light from the sun better than other colors spread.
@az03r4 (913)
• Indonesia
12 Dec 07
Help me MyLot - Why do I can't access my earnings tabs?
I have no idea about that. But, wait I'll try to find it out after this...okie.
• India
4 Dec 07
Its because the sun’s light (white lights as we see it) is made up of seven colours which we see in the rainbow. Of these seven colours blue has the shortest wavelength and hence is scattered most by air particles. Don’t ask me what has short wavelength got to do with scattering coz I don’t know these complicated physics theories (hated physics in school). So on a perfectly clear cloudless day, we see the sky as blue.
@Lakota12 (42600)
• United States
4 Dec 07
http://math.ucr.edu/home/baez/physics/General/BlueSky/blue_sky.html Go here it tells ya and I didnt know this but had some sort of and idea of it. hugs
@pilbara (1436)
• Australia
4 Dec 07
It's called raleigh scattering. Light scatters off the particles in the atmosphere and Blue light has the shortest wavelength so it scatters more.
@raydene (9871)
• United States
4 Dec 07
Air is made up of lots of other things..The color would be determined what else is there other then oxygen...We all know that many bad things are going into the air cause if it wasn't then we wouldn't be having an ozone problem... My answer is not very scientific ... xoxoxo