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Why Is the Sky Blue?

Why Is the Sky Blue?. How does light scatter?. Why Is the S ky Blue?. Light travels in a straight line until it hits matter Air is not empty; it contains oxygen, nitrogen, carbon dioxide and particles When sunlight strikes a oxygen or nitrogen molecule, the molecule vibrates.

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Why Is the Sky Blue?

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  1. Why Is the Sky Blue? How does light scatter?

  2. Why Is the Sky Blue? • Light travels in a straight line until it hits matter • Air is not empty; it contains oxygen, nitrogen, carbon dioxide and particles • When sunlight strikes a oxygen or nitrogen molecule, the molecule vibrates

  3. What is Scattering? • A light beam strikes an atom and excites electrons to a higher energy orbital

  4. What is Scattering? • The electrons briefly stay at the higher energy orbital then jump back down and reemit the light in many different directions

  5. Why Is the Sky Blue? Air components scatter the high-frequency light

  6. How Do Our Eyes Detect Color? • Our eyes have over 120 million rods and cones on our retina • These receptors process light

  7. Color and Our Eyes Continued • Rods transmit black and white images • Cones transmit color and sharpness

  8. Color, Our Eyes and Rods Continued • We have more sensitivity with green sensing cones than red or blue

  9. Why Is the Sky Blue? • Violet light is scattered the most by air and particles • But we have a hard time seeing violet • Blue light is second most scattered light

  10. Why Is the Sky Blue?

  11. Think-Pair-Share Your Turn….

  12. Why are Clouds White? • Clouds are made up of water droplets • The droplets vary in size • Small droplets scatter high frequencies like violet while large ones scatter low frequency light like red

  13. Why are Clouds White? • A wide variety of color frequencies are scattered • The overall result is a white cloud

  14. Why is the Sunset Red? SmartBoard Exercise

  15. Homework • Read pp. 570-573 • Answer Ques. 18, 20, 39, 40

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