what is scattering of light? why basically sky looks in blue color?
Answers
Answer:
Scattering occurs when light or other energy waves pass through an imperfect medium (such as air filled with particles of some sort) and are deflected from a straight path. A great example is when the sun's rays pass through clouds. The light is deflected off of its straight path and scatters in many directions.
A clear cloudless day-time sky is blue because molecules in the air scatter blue light from the sun more than they scatter red light. When we look towards the sun at sunset, we see red and orange colours because the blue light has been scattered out and away from the line of sight.
when the light wave passes through the atmosphere it is absorbed by the molecules of air, these molecules further emit visible radiation in all the direction and this phenomenon is called scattering of light.
According to Rayleigh the intensity of light scattered is inversely proportional to the fourth power of the wavelength of incident light ; i, e. Hence the larger wavelength less is intensity of scattered light. For this reason red light is scattered the least while violet, Indigo or blue scatter more.
The sky is blue due to the scattering of Sunlight by the molecules of the atmosphere. when sunlight passes through the atmosphere then nitrogen and oxygen molecules present in the atmosphere absorbs a part of Sunlight and re-emit it. Free gas molecules of the atmosphere is scatter like in all directions but according to Rayleigh's law of scattering as the intensity of the scattered light is inversely proportional to the fourth power of wavelength of light ,the light of short wavelength is scattered more than the light at the long wavelength .For this reason when we look at the sky the scattered light enters into our eyes which contains blue colour in a large proportion and hence the Sky looks blue.