We earned $8.12 yesterday! Thank you for shopping on Amazon through our blog!!!!!
The sky’s apparent blue color has a few different factors, but they all boil down to one thing: light. We only get 0.000000724654% of all of the energy radiated by the sun, but that is enough to make the sky blue, sunrises and sunsets red, and to keep us warm. Because of Earth’s curvature and tilt, this tiny bit of sunlight is spread out along Earth’s surface in varying degrees, depending on where you are located. The equator is the warmest because sunlight hits it straight on almost all year round, and the poles are coldest because sunlight hits it at an angle only half of the year, the other half, hardly any sunlight at all hits the poles. We see this sunlight in different colors because of the way the sunlight hits us at different times of the day. We did an experiment on this refraction of light and this is an account of what happened. First, a water bottle without a side wrapper was filled up about one fourth of the way up with clean water. Then a few small pinches of milk powder were added. The mixture was shaken thoroughly. We shut the blinds and turned out the lights. After all that was done, a small high powered flashlight was shined through the bottom of the bottle and we looked through the top and sides of the bottle to see what colors we perceived. This was repeated 3 more times, one fourth more water added and a small bit of milk powder every time, the flashlight was shined through as well 3 more times.
After we did the experiment and recorded what happened, this is what I learned. Looking through the side of the bottle closer to the light at the bottom, the water appeared bluish like the ocean every time. On the second to last test and the last test, the top of the water away from the flashlight seemed dark and almost reddish. The top of the water really seemed red every time I looked at it.
I did a bit of research, and I found out why this happened, why the sky is blue, and why sunsets and sunrises are red. My results in this experiment are closely related to why the sky is blue and why sunsets are red. Light is refracted in many different colors, but our eyes are really sensitive to some, and not as sensitive to others. The bottom of the water appeared blue because blue light is scattered a lot more than red and other colored light. We would also see violet, except our eyes are not as sensitive to violet as they are to blue, so we do not see it. The blue light is scattered out of the side, and we perceive that the water is blue from the side. When I looked through the top of the water, I saw the water was red. This is the opposite of why I saw blue. Red light is not scattered as much as some other colors, such as blue and violet, and we see red light easily, just as we do blue. This red light I saw was because the red was not scattered as much, so this was the color that came to the top of the water away from the light. The reason I saw it as dark at the top of the water was because the milk powder stopped some of the light from reaching the top.
This ties into why the sky is blue and why sunsets and sunrises are red very nicely. The same thing that happened in the bottle happens in the atmosphere every day. During the day, we perceive the sky to be blue because the sunlight is refracted at an angle, so we see the light that is scattered a lot, the blue light. Of course, we would see violet skies too, but we do not perceive violet light very easily, like I said earlier. So on a non-cloudy day, we see blue light, but why do we see red sunrises and red sunsets? This is also explained by the lab experiment in that, since we see light straight on during sunrises and sunsets, we see the light that is not scattered the most, the red light.
All in all, understanding why the sky is blue is quite easy because of light scattering and light refraction. This is very important because of everyday life using refraction and light scattering. One example of everyday refraction is putting something in water. The light is refracted and the object appears to be cut in half!
Sources-Dr. Neubauer’s 7th grade lab experiment
Check out these cool science books on Amazon!
by Top Lee, 7th grade, Lowcountry Prep
