Light is an energy that travels in waves. Light is a wave of vibrating electric and magnetic fields and is a part of the electromagnetic spectrum. The energy of the radiation depends on its wavelength and frequency. A wavelength is the distance between the tops of the waves. The frequency is the number of waves that pass by each second.
The longer the wavelength of the light, the lower the frequency, and the less energy it contains. Visible light is the part of the electromagnetic spectrum that our eyes can see. Light from a light bulb or the Sun may look white, but it is actually a combination of many colors. Light can be split into its different colors with a prism. A rainbow is a natural prism effect.
Other creatures seem able to see the ultraviolet area of the spectrum. We can only see a tiny part of what's going on.
So a butterfly or a reindeer , which can perceive ultraviolet light, might be seeing a different, perhaps more colorful sunset than we do? The more you look at things, the more you realize how unique your own experience is as a human on this planet, at this particular place and time.
All rights reserved. In simple terms, what makes a good sunset happen? Do dust and air pollution make sunsets more dramatic? Do the seasons affect sunsets? So conversely, could local weather forecasters predict a pretty sunset? Why are sunsets sometimes more dramatic after a major storm? Is it true that by the time we see a sunset, the sun is actually already gone?
Sounds like there's a lot of science to sunsets, but it's also a very subjective experience. This interview has been edited and condensed. Follow Amanda Fiegl on Twitter. Share Tweet Email. Read This Next Wild parakeets have taken a liking to London. Animals Wild Cities Wild parakeets have taken a liking to London Love them or hate them, there's no denying their growing numbers have added an explosion of color to the city's streets.
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As the light waves bounce in lots of different directions, we say they have been scattered. How light waves get scattered depends strongly on the size of the particle compared with the wavelength of the light. Particles that are small compared with the light wavelength scatter blue light more strongly than red light. Within the visible range of light, red light waves are scattered the least by atmospheric gas molecules.
So at sunrise and sunset, when the sunlight travels a long path through the atmosphere to reach our eyes, the blue light has been mostly removed, leaving mostly red and yellow light remaining. The result is that the sunlight takes on an orange or red cast, which we can see reflected from clouds or other objects as a colorful sunset or sunrise.
Large particles of pollution or dust scatter light in a way that changes much less for different colors. Thus, we view the skies as being blue in color.
Meanwhile, the light that is not scattered is able to pass through our atmosphere and reach our eyes in a rather non-interrupted path. The lower frequencies of sunlight ROY tend to reach our eyes as we sight directly at the sun during midday. While sunlight consists of the entire range of frequencies of visible light, not all frequencies are equally intense. In fact, sunlight tends to be most rich with yellow light frequencies.
For these reasons, the sun appears yellow during midday due to the direct passage of dominant amounts of yellow frequencies through our atmosphere and to our eyes. The appearance of the sun changes with the time of day. While it may be yellow during midday, it is often found to gradually turn color as it approaches sunset.
This can be explained by light scattering. As the sun approaches the horizon line, sunlight must traverse a greater distance through our atmosphere; this is demonstrated in the diagram below.
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