by Anonymous / Unidentified Author

Why the Sky is Blue
Language: English 
Light from the sun
contains all frequencies,
all colors,
of visible light

Sunlight travels
in a straight line,
more or less,
to Earth

Upon reaching
the Earth,
the light is scattered

by molecules of air

the scattering increases
in proportion to the fourth power of the frequency
of the light

light of the higher frequencies
is blue in color,

so most of the scattered light is also blue,

and coming in from all directions,
we see this scattered light,

we see the sky
is blue!

This text is a conflation by the composer drawn from Carl Aude, who works at NASA. The answer is based in part on the explanation in Hecht, Eugene. Optics. 2nd Edition. New York: Addison-Wesley, 1988. pp. 293-294 ipl.org/div/farq/skyFARQ.html


Text Authorship:

  • by Anonymous / Unidentified Author

Musical settings (art songs, Lieder, mélodies, (etc.), choral pieces, and other vocal works set to this text), listed by composer (not necessarily exhaustive):


Researcher for this page: Joost van der Linden [Guest Editor]

This text was added to the website: 2026-02-01
Line count: 22
Word count: 85