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Science for Kids: Why is the Sky blue? Why is the Ocean blue?

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Science for Kids: Why is the Sky blue? Why is the Ocean blue?

Do you often take a minute out of your busy routine and get amazed by the wonder mother nature is?

  • Why is the ocean blue?
  • Why is the sky blue and where does it start?
  • Why is the sky blue?

Have you ever wondered why the ocean is blue? 

Otherwise, if you turn your tap on and fill a transparent glass with water, it does not seem blue, will it?

Facts: 

  • For many years, folks believed that the ocean is blue as a result of reflection. The important reason the ocean seems blue will involve reflection, however, it isn’t as a result of the ocean acting as a mirror to the sky.
  • Ocean water does not always look blue. And typically it seems to be deeper blue at different times. For instance, the farther you go inside the ocean, the deeper the water gets. The additional water there’s, the additional light-weight gets absorbed. That is why deep ocean waters could seem dark blue.
  • The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration considers the ocean to be blue because of how it absorbs daylight. Once daylight hits the ocean’s waters, the water molecules naturally absorb the sunshine rays.
  • The bucket of water and the air around us seems clear and transparent because the light can penetrate completely through these particles. 

 

Let us now discuss the answer to one of the persistent questions of childhood.

 

Why is the sky blue?

The explanation begins with the ultimate source of sunshine in our solar system: the Sun. Sunlight appears to be white; however, this white light is formed of all the colours of the colour spectrum, starting from red through violet. On its path through the atmosphere, daylight is absorbed, reflected, and altered by completely different components, compounds, and particles. 

The colour of the sky depends mostly upon the wavelengths of the incoming light; however air molecules and mud particles conjointly play vital roles.

When the sun is high overhead, the majority of its rays intercept the atmosphere at nearly vertical angles. Shorter wavelengths of sunshine, like violet and blue, square measure a lot of simply absorbed by air molecules than lightweight from longer wavelengths (that is, from red, orange, and yellow bands within the spectrum). Air molecules then radiate violet and blue light in numerous directions, thus saturating the sky. However, the noonday sky seems blue, instead of a mixture of blue and violet, as a result of our eyes square measure a lot of sensitivity to blue light than to violet light.

 

Why is the ocean blue?

To perceive why this happens, you need to bear in mind that an object appears to be a particular colour as a result of it absorbing all the colours of the spectrum aside from the colour it seems to be. 

This suggests that water reflects blue light and absorbs all the remainder. Some areas of the ocean generally seem inexperienced however that needs to do with however shallow that half is. As you travel deeper below the ocean you’ll notice that at about 46-meters, most of the blue lightweight is replaced with pitch darkness.

For starters, ocean water isn’t pure. Ocean water has voluminous things dissolved in it, like salt and tiny items of Dead Sea creatures. These particles within the water reflect some portion of the sunshine before it’s time to develop the complete blue colour. The sunshine coming out from the ocean is sometimes additional greenish-blue in colour.

Summing it all up, the ocean is blue owing to the way the water absorbs lightweight particles, and conjointly as a result some of the blue lightweight from the sky is reflected.

Finally, we would like to accept the time of day and also the position of the Sun within the sky. Once the sun is shining bright, the ocean seems bluer than it will late at night-time, when the ocean appears to be terribly dark and nearly black.

Like many such valuable questions in science, the answer is not as easy as a simple yes or no. There are often lots of correct, but incomplete, answers to many questions. To me, that’s what makes science so interesting.


Also published on Medium.

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