WHY IS THE SKY RED IN THE AFTERNOON

There are two reasons for this.

First, let’s talk about Rayleigh scattering. You probably know that sunlight is made of many, many different colors (wavelengths) of
visible light. When sunlight passes through the air, some colors interact with air molecules more strongly than others. Red,
orange, yellow, and green light pass through air without much interference, but blue and violet light interact strongly with air
molecules. Blue and violet light are absorbed by air molecules, then re-emitted in all directions. This gives the daytime sky its
characteristic blue color.

At sunrise and sunset, the Sun’s light must pass through more air before it reaches your eyes. As a result of the longer pathway,
even more of the Sun’s colors are absorbed or scattered by the intervening air. Only the red/orange portion of the visible
spectrum makes it through, which contributes to the color of the sky at sunrise or sunset.

But that’s not the only factor; if it were, some sunsets wouldn’t appear redder than others.

The color of a sunrise or sunset is also due to weather conditions and the amount of dust in the atmosphere. Dust, like air
molecules, tends to scatter light, although the mechanism is a bit different. At any rate, if there are a lot of particles in the air,
sunrises and sunsets can look spectacularly red/orange.

WHY DOES THE OCEAN APPEAR BLUE? IS IT BECAUSE IT REFLECTS THE COLOR OF THE SKY?

"The ocean looks blue because red, orange and yellow (long wavelength light) are absorbed more strongly by water than is blue
(short wavelength light). So when white light from the sun enters the ocean, it is mostly the blue that gets returned. Same reason
the sky is blue."

In other words, the color of the ocean and the color of the sky are related but occur independently of each other: in both cases,
the preferential absorption of long-wavelength (reddish) light gives rise to the blue. Note that this effect only works if the water is
very pure; if the water is full of mud, algae or other impurities, the light scattered off these impurities will overwhelm the water's
natural blueness.

Gross then asks, "So why are sunsets orange?" Several people to wrote in to correct or clarify that comment.

Perhaps the most helpful response came from Michael Kruger of the department of physics at the University of Missouri. He sent
the following reaction:

"The answer to why the sky is blue isn't quite correct. The sky is blue not because the atmosphere absorbs the other colors, but
because the atmosphere tends to scatter shorter wavelength (blue) light to a greater extent than longer wavelength (red) light.
Blue light from the sun is scattered every which way, much more so than the other colors, so when you look up at the daytime sky
you see blue no matter where you look. This scattering is called 'Rayleigh scattering'; the amount of scattering goes as the
frequency of the light to the 4th power. By the way, this effect is most prevalent when the particles that do the scattering are
smaller than the wavelength of light, as is the case for the nitrogen and oxygen molecules in the atmosphere.

"Now we are in a position to figure out why sunsets are reddish! When the sun is setting, the light that reaches you has had to go
through lots more atmosphere than when the sun is overhead, hence the only color light that is not scattered away is the long
wavelength light, the red.

"We can also answer why clouds, milk, powdered sugar and salt are white. The particles in these materials that are responsible for
scattering the light are larger than the wavelength of light. Consequently, all colors of light are scattered by more or less the same
amount. Much of the scattering in milk is due to the lipids (fat). If you take out the fat, the milk will not scatter as much light; that
is probably why skim milk looks the way it does.