Why is the sky blue?

Many people often wonder why the sky is blue and not another colour. Have you ever questioned yourself about this?

Even though the sun’s light may look white/yellow it’s actually made up of all the colours of the rainbow. Throughout your life you would have seen the colour prism, that’s what happens with the light from the sun. The prism is a 3D triangle. When a light is shone through a prism you can see all the colours of the rainbow coming out the other end.

sky

Have you ever visited The LandĀ Of Magic Windows?

If you have, you would have discovered that the light we all see is just a bit of the light surrounding us.

Light energy travels in waves. All colours have different sized waves, red having bigger waves and blue having smaller waves. Light travels in straight lines unless something obstructs it: a mirror would reflect it, a prism would bend it and gas molecules would scatter it.

When sunlight reaches the Earth’s atmosphere it’s scattered by all the gas molecules and particles in the air. The light that is scattered more is blue because it travels in shorter and smaller waves, that’s why we usually see a blue sky.