We have all wondered, at some point, why the sky is blue. Now is the time to find out – after all, someday your kids will probably ask YOU why the sky is blue! Ready?
The light that comes from the Sun is white. That white light is actually a mixture of all colors, but because they are mixed up we don’t see the separate colors just the white sunlight.
As the sun’s light passes through our atmosphere, the light becomes scattered by all the air and particles such smog and dust. The part of the sunlight that gets scattered the most is the blue part. That means that the blue gets separated from the other colors and we get a blue sky!
At sunset or sunrise, the sun is at a very low angle, so the rays pass through even more molecules and particles. This scatters the light even more, separating red, orange and yellow from the white light. The more particles, the more scattering.
