Let's do a historical #OpticsLessonOfTheDay on the birthday of my favorite scientist ever, Michael Faraday (1791-1867)! Though he is relatively unknown to the public, he is inarguably one of the greatest scientists who ever lived... and an amazing person, as well.
By societal standards of the time, Faraday should have lived a mundane, uneventful life. He was born the son of a blacksmith in Surrey in the UK. He was raised with little formal education, and was apprenticed to a bookbinder at age 14.
But working at a bookshop gave Faraday access to lots of books, including science books, and his master George Ribeau was a decent fellow who gave Faraday leisure time to indulge his curiosity.
Being clinically depressed makes me very self-centered and it’s hard to break that. My mom has no such excuse. She knows I’ve been struggling and still she chose to make it worse.
And this is the mom who peddled antivax and election conspiracy theories unsolicited when she called me on *my* birthday, so I can sincerely say that she can go to hell.
Okay, let's to an #OpticsLessonOfTheDay: why is the sky blue? The answer is an interesting mix of several different aspect of physics as well as the working of the human eye.
First off: we note that the sun radiates light somewhat uniformly over the entire visible spectrum of light, which ranges from 380 to 750 nanometers. (Image via Wikipedia.) It peaks a bit in the middle of the spectrum, so we picture the sun as a bit more yellow than white.
Now, during the day, we see blue light everywhere *except* in the direction of the sun. This is because the gases in the atmosphere preferentially scatter blue light. All the blue you see is from light scattering off of atmospheric molecules.