Originally posted by Jackal1
Why`s the sky blue? Where does rain come from?. What color is clear? Give it a rest.
The blue color of the sky is due to Rayleigh scattering. As light moves through the atmosphere, most of the longer wavelengths pass straight through. Little of the red, orange and yellow light is affected by the air.
However, much of the shorter wavelength light is absorbed by the gas molecules. The absorbed blue light is then radiated in different directions. It gets scattered all around the sky. Whichever direction you look, some of this scattered blue light reaches you. Since you see the blue light from everywhere overhead, the sky looks blue.
On the surface of water, molecules continuously travel between the gaseous and liquid form. When there is enough energy for the water to give up more vapor than it absorbs, the vapor which is now warm, rises into the atmosphere until it is cooled by the surrounding air.
When enough water vapor is concentrated in a given volume of air, the vapor comes out of solution with the air and forms tiny droplets. These are seen as clouds.
When the aerodynamic forces are too small to keep the droplets in suspension, the droplets begin to fall.
This is where rain comes from.
As color is a wavelength of light, the color we see on objects is actually the reflected lightwaves from that object. A reflection from the surface of a completely clear object would be all the spectrum of the light source.
Hope this helps.
