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Why Is the Sky Blue

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Why is the sky blue? Many people ask this question and we think they come across as silly or young. But the ironic thing is, is that this question touches on some of the deepest aspects of astronomy and skygazing (Sky-Watch). The question is what causes us to see the sky as blue? There are a variety of answers and not necessarily all of them being true, like when you tell a child that it’s because God spilled his water. The sky is blue because of the wavelength of the colors in the electromagnetic spectrum, the atmosphere of Earth, and our eyes.

Many people believe that the sky is light blue just because they have grown up to think only about the color blue when they are asked about the sky. But scientific studies show that the light from the Sun is all the colors of the rainbow. (Note card 3) The light travels in waves and consists of weightless particles that are moving around 200,000 kilometers per second (Sky-Watch). The range of light that our eyes can see is the electromagnetic spectrum. Each color in the spectrum has a different frequency-which is the number of cycles per second. The frequency of light is determined by color. For example, blue light has a shorter and highter frequency than the others. Furthermore, now you know that the light waves coming from the Sun contain all the colors with different frequencies and that the light with a lower frequency has a longer wavelength.

For my second point, it is our atmosphere on Earth. In suppor of this we know that the light from the Sun has different frequencies. Consequently when light comes into our atmosphere at its 200,000 kilmoter per second pace it collides with the oxygen and nitrogen atoms. The colors with the short wavelenghts with higher frequencies, such as the color blue are roughly the same size as the oxygen atoms. This causes the blue light to get scattered more easily across the sky. But

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