Olivia starts to explain the colors of the sky

_Elsa_

‘Why is the sky blue?

‘The sky is blue because the air scatters blue light from the Sun across the sky and down to our eyes.

We think of air as being clear and transparent, and it is. But air is made up of countless tiny objects, mostly molecules of nitrogen. When sunlight goes thousands of miles through our atmosphere, a tiny amount of light becomes scattered by these objects. White light is made up of all colors of light. Nitrogen molecules scatter blue light more than they do the other colors. So a little bit of blue light bounces around in the sky and then enters our eyes. That makes the sky look blue. (Source) 

“Would you like to learn about the colors of the sky?” asks Olivia. 

‘The colours of the sky are caused by a complex interplay between our sun and our planet’s atmosphere. Artists have long painted the sky in all its guises, and storytellers have often taken inspiration from it. Ancient Greeks like Plato and Aristotle were the first to write their theories about colour and its relation to meteorological phenomena. Yet, it took scientists many centuries to unravel the science behind the colours we see in the sky. 

For much of history, Rainbows have inspired stories and myths. In Norse mythology, rainbows were said to be a bridge from Earth to Asgard, the land of the Gods. In Ireland, a Leprechaun is said to guard a pot of gold at the end of the rainbow. In Hindu culture, the god Indra was said to shoot arrows of lightning from a rainbow. 

It was Isaac Newton though, in a 1672 letter to the Royal Society, who detailed experiments showing that white light consists of a mix of different coloured light. The colours form a spectrum from red to violet, just as we see in a rainbow. Using a prism to split the light, Newton explained that the different colours in the white light bend (refract) as they travel from the air into the glass. The violet light bends more than the red light, separating out the colours and creating the spectrum. 

Rainbows are also created by refraction when the sun hits raindrops. They appear when the sun is low in the sky behind us, and there is rain in front. White light from the sun is both reflected and refracted by the spherical raindrops, in place of the prism of Newton’s experiments, to create the circular rainbow we see.’ (Source) 

Olivia forgets that he’s just a 3-year-old boy so he might not be fully understanding everything that she just told him. Yet he sits patiently waiting for Olivia to tell him more. 

Let’s continue - Here comes the why questions!

Start at the beginning – Olivia explains the colors of the sky

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Start at the beginning of the main story – Why … But WHY?

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