3 ms·
> why is the sky blue? > The sky is blue because of something called Rayleigh scattering. The sun sends out UV and infrared waves, and some of them get trapped
by uniq7 2mo ago
> why is the sky blue?
> The sky is blue because of something called Rayleigh scattering. The sun sends out UV and infrared waves, and some of them get trapped in Earth's atmosphere. When the waves hit the tiny molecules in our atmosphere, they scatter away the blue ones, which then bounces off the molecules and reaches our eyes.
"filtered to the U.S. elementary-school curriculum", suuure
- tdeck 2mo agoThere are science books written for curious children that explain this kind of thing. I remember reading them.
- ymhr 2mo agoIsn’t that also wrong? From what I remember it’s the blue wavelengths of visible light that are scattered and make us perceive the sky as blue. UV may well be scattered too but we can’t see that, right? Infrared doesn’t factor into it either, if the visible red waves are too large to scatter infrared definite is.
- danaris 2mo agoYes, that's what it's saying: "they scatter away the blue ones, which then bounces off the molecules and reaches our eyes".
- Sharlin 2mo agoYes, but the thing about UV and IR rays is a red herring.
- topaz0 2mo agoIt's written as if the UV and infrared are scattering the blue, which is not correct. Everything scatters off small particles, but shorter (blue) wavelengths scatter more (as the 6th power of the frequency), so most of the scattered light is blue. The details matter somewhat, i.e if the sun were a bit cooler, there'd be less blue in the incident light to scatter and you'd see something somewhat greener.
- simonjgreen 2mo agoI was definitely taught this in those terms and at that age. Perhaps the unexpected response comes from its recall ability. It’s not the personality of a child, just the material a child is exposed to.
- Aeolun 2mo agoI’ve read random kid science books to my son with this info in. The problem is the AI has perfect recall.
- rzzzt 2mo agoChoose your explanation in comics form: - https://xkcd.com/1145/ https://xkcd.com/1145/ - https://www.exocomics.com/743/ https://www.exocomics.com/743/
- TZubiri 2mo agoI remember seeing this as a fun-fact in some high school book. It's not a 5th grader answer in the sense that most won't remember it perfectly, but it can appear in their school material, no doubt