10/14/2025
“Why Is the Sky Blue?”
Imagine sunlight as a rainbow made invisible — it has all the colors mixed together. When that sunlight reaches Earth, it meets the air, which is full of tiny, invisible molecules (like oxygen and nitrogen).
Now, when light hits those molecules, it bounces off — kind of like a ball bouncing in every direction. But not all colors bounce (or scatter) the same!
Blue light has shorter, quicker waves.
Red light has longer, slower waves.
The shorter blue waves get scattered everywhere, while the red ones mostly go straight through.
So when you look up, you see blue light coming at you from every direction — that’s why the sky looks blue!
And when the Sun sets, the light has to travel through more air, so the blue gets scattered away before it reaches you — leaving reds, oranges, and pinks behind.