sky color
Children often ask clever questions that parents may not be able to answer with similar intelligence, such as "Why is the sky blue? Indeed, this question aroused the interest of many scientists who have been puzzled by this phenomenon for centuries, and it was necessary to understand many facts to answer this question, and among these facts - the nature of sunlight, its angle of propagation. Travel through the atmosphere, the molecules that make up the atmosphere and the way light is received by the human eye, and in this article we will clarify why we see different colors in the sky during the day.
Sky blue color
Consisting of all seven colors of the spectrum, white sunlight travels through the Earth's atmosphere, and when it strikes air molecules, the colors of the spectrum of different wavelengths are scattered in all directions and, since blue has a short wavelength, it scatters more. than colors with a long wavelength, like red, for example. Therefore, we see the sky in blue. This phenomenon is called the Tyndale phenomenon, after the scientist John Tyndall, who showed that the passage of light through a liquid carrying small particles causes short blue waves to scatter more strongly than red waves.
Other colors of the sky
The color of the sky at sunset
We mentioned earlier that the sky appears blue. Because blue is a color with short wavelengths, so it is more spread out than other colors, the question arises why the sky does not appear violet, even though violet presumably has the shortest wavelength. Is the color more scattered? This can be explained by the fact that our eyes are less sensitive to violet light than to blue light, and because some of the violet light is absorbed in the upper layers of the atmosphere, so the percentage of violet in light sun is low.
Why does the sky appear dark at night?
The question of why the sky looks dark at night may seem silly at first, but this question has long intrigued scientists. Planet Earth is surrounded by stars and galaxies that can turn the darkness of the sky into bright light, so why is the sky dark at night? The German astronomer Heinrich Wilhelm Olbers asked this question in 1823 with what is known as Olbers' Paradox, and the paradox here means that the darkness of the sky contradicts the assumption of the existence of a fixed and infinite world in which the stars are distributed. stars and galaxies. To explain this phenomenon:
The first hypothesis: that dust particles can obstruct the passage of light from distant objects, but the fact that light striking the dust works to heat it up, making it glow and shine like the original light source.
The second hypothesis: that the universe is expanding and expanding, that is, the stars and galaxies are moving away from the Earth, and the length of the electromagnetic wave reaching us from it is increasing. The invisible red, and if this interpretation is correct, the shorter wavelength ultraviolet light, will also shift into the visible range and this does not happen in reality.
The third hypothesis: It is the hypothesis that can explain the darkness of the sky at night, and is related to the speed of light and the age of the stars. Light travels at a speed of 300,000 kilometers per second, which is a very high speed, but also a limited one, and this means that we can only see things when we reach the light they emit, and astronomers agree that the maximum distance across from which we can receive light is between 10-15 billion light years away; Then there is not enough time to see the light of the distant galaxies, and the nearby galaxies, when their light reaches us, will have passed a long time and will be dead and dark, which means that the necessary conditions for the existence of the sky are fulfilled. they are bright and luminous at night will not exist at any time.
color vision mechanism
Sunlight, an example of white light, is described as polychromatic light because it consists of seven colors of the spectrum, each color having a specific wavelength. The wavelength of violet is 400nm, indigo is 425nm, blue is 470nm, green is 550nm, yellow is 600nm, orange is 630nm, and finally red is 665nm.
When white light from seven colors of the spectrum falls on an object, we see it as red, because this object absorbs all the colors of the spectrum and only reflects the red color to our eyes. Because it absorbs all colors and does not reflect any color to the eye, and the white body does not absorb any color but reflects all colors to the eye, so we see it as white.
The human retina consists of special photoreceptors, which are rods and cones. The wand allows the eye to see things in black, white, and gray, and works in low light, while the cones are what allow the eye to see different colors. There are three types of cones. Cones that enable the eye to distinguish colors at short wavelengths, traditionally known as blue light-sensitive cones, cones that distinguish colors at medium wavelengths, known as green light-sensitive cones, and cones that distinguish colors at longer wavelengths large, known as cones that are sensitive to red light,
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