Re: Sensory Infixes in rtemmu (was Mauve and a related conlang question)

> Van:  Christophe Grandsire
> Verzonden: woensdag 12 juni 2002 22:30
>
> As for the sky, it is blue because of light scattering, and this
scattering is mainly
> due to nitrogen since it's the majority gas. An atmosphere of nitrogen
without
> oxygen would still be blue. It's only the thickness that matters. I
remember
> that the teacher made the calculations for the light scattering in the
> atmosphere and neglected the presence of the oxygen. Still he got
> the right colour :) .
As Christophe already mentioned, the blueness of the sky is not due to any
chemical properties of the components of the atmopshere, but due to the
physical properties of light.

As red light has twice as long a wavelength as blue light, the latter gets
scattered much more. As light comes to us from the sun, the redder parts go
almost straight trough, while the bluest parts get scattered around many
many times.

When the length of the path of the light through our atmosphere becomes
longer, i.e. when the sun is lower in the sky, this effect is increased, so
in the evening, the sky becomes even more blue, and the sun more red (since
all the blue parts are scattered away).

It's one of the first things you learn in astrophysics ;-)

Maarten