THE UNIVERSE AND LIGHT

WHY IS THE SKY BLUE?

Why Is The Sunset Red?
How Is Rainbow Formed?
LIGHT

Light travels from the Sun and through the

atmosphere in invisible waves. Visible light
that looks white to us, is actually made up of
many different colors of different wavelengths.
When light comes from the Sun to the earth, it comes in a straight
line and this contains all of the colors of the spectrum.
white light visible light spectrum

Glass prism
 DUAL NATURE OF LIGHT

The concept of wave-particle duality of light

says that light possesses both wave and
particle properties, even though we cannot
observe both at the same time.
Reflection - occurs when the waves encounter a surface or other boundary that does not
absorb the energy of the radiation and bounces the waves away from the surface
Refraction - the bending of light as it passes from another medium
Diffraction - the spreading of waves around obstacles
LIGHT AS A WAVE
 WHAT IS A WAVE?
A wave can be described as a disturbance that travels through a medium
from one location to another location.
A medium is a substance or material that carries the wave.

A Wave Transports Energy and Not Matter

Waves are said to be an energy transport phenomenon. As a disturbance moves through a
medium from one particle to its adjacent particle, energy is being transported from one
end of the medium to the other.

TRANSVERSE WAVE LONGITUDINAL WAVE

WAVELENGTH OF A WAVE
Wave properties:

 (lambda) – a symbol used for

wavelength.

T (period) – time for one complete

wave. Its SI unit is in second.

f (frequency) – the number of

complete waves in one second. The
SI unit for frequency is Hz (Hertz)

A (amplitude) - the maximum

displacement or distance moved by a
point on a vibrating body or wave
measured from its equilibrium
position
Short and Long Wavelengths
 ELECTROMAGNETIC SPECTRUM

There are actually a lot more colors but humans can't actually see them. There are
specialized equipment that scientists use to actually see these colors and these help
scientists in various scientific studies.
By the time that light reaches the atmosphere of Earth it may encounter water
molecules, dust or ice since the light waves are incredibly small, smaller than one
millionth of a meter.
The light waves will interact with even the tiniest gas molecules in the air then
they begin to bounce off the parts and this bouncing process is called scattering.
Where they go depends how large the molecule was compared to the
wavelength size and small particles compared to their wavelength will scratch a
blue light more strongly than red light since the Earth's atmosphere is mainly
made up of oxygen and nitrogen.
Blues will scatter sunlight in more directions than the red and this creates the blue sky that
we see the red light waves have the least amount of scattering and this is due to the
interaction with the gas molecules.
When you see a sunrise or a sunset the sunlight is actually travelling in a longer path through
the atmosphere and then finally to your eyes where you can see it.

The blue light has almost been completely removed but that still leaves the red and yellow
light this is why when you see a sunset you're actually seeing the colors of reds, oranges and
yellows.
If there are any clouds in the sky they will reflect these colors. The colors are being
reflected from the water and the ice particles in the clouds and the molecules also absorb
the wavelength colors as well.
So when you look up at a sunset you just realized that there's no more blue left and the Sun
has to go for a lot of atmosphere to actually show off the new colors of red orange and
yellow.
 ELECTROMAGNETIC SPECTRUM

There are actually a lot more colors but humans can't actually see them. There are
specialized equipment that scientists use to actually see these colors and these
help scientists in various scientific studies.
In conclusion you can probably say that the sky is not blue or red you can actually say it's
white until it actually hits something within the atmosphere that changes its color.

The Rayleigh Scattering explains these blue skies and sunsets through interacting of
particles in the atmosphere.
A rainbow is basically a light that's been split up into the different colors of the
spectrum refracted out of millions of tiny droplets of water.

We think of rainbows as an arc

because we only see the half that's
above the horizon.
If we are high enough, we could see that rainbows are a full circle.
The perfect conditions
for a rainbow are;

WATER
SUNLIGHT DROPLETS
Sunlight in its purest form straight from the Sun is white light. When a ray of that light
reaches a water droplet a whole lot of action takes place inside.
As sunlight enters the water droplet it starts to slow down or bend slightly and change
direction, this is what we call refraction.
The light bounces off the back
of the droplet and it's refracted
again as it exits.

Refraction ends up separating the light into all of the colors of the
spectrum. These colors are what we see in the sky as a rainbow.
Each color represents a different wavelength of light and that wavelength is what
determines where the color appears in the rainbow. Red has the longest wavelength and
it gets refracted the least. Red always appears on the outside of the rainbow the largest
arc. Violet is the shortest wavelength, It gets refracted the most and with that reflection
it ends up always being the smallest arch of the rainbow