alt Hacker News> why is the sky blue?
> The sky is blue because of something called Rayleigh scattering. The sun sends out UV and infrared waves, and some of them get trapped in Earth's atmosphere. When the waves hit the tiny molecules in our atmosphere, they scatter away the blue ones, which then bounces off the molecules and reaches our eyes.
"filtered to the U.S. elementary-school curriculum", suuure
Replies
tdeck • today at 8:10 AM
There are science books written for curious children that explain this kind of thing. I remember reading them.
simonjgreen • today at 8:32 AM
I was definitely taught this in those terms and at that age.
Perhaps the unexpected response comes from its recall ability. It’s not the personality of a child, just the material a child is exposed to.
Isn’t that also wrong? From what I remember it’s the blue wavelengths of visible light that are scattered and make us perceive the sky as blue. UV may well be scattered too but we can’t see that, right? Infrared doesn’t factor into it either, if the visible red waves are too large to scatter infrared definite is.