When humans look at the sky, it appears blue, but the Sun appears yellow. What causes this phenomenon?
1 answer:
Light behaves like a wave, and the different colors we perceive are the result of light hitting our eyes at different <em>wavelengths</em>. The air molecules in our atmosphere scatter this visible light, with a "preference" towards light of shorter wavelengths -- blue and violet light. Light of longer wavelengths (green, yellow, orange, red), doesn't pass through to us as visibly until later in the day, when the sun's light has more atmosphere to pass through before it reaches our eyes. The blue light becomes so scattered by the air molecules in its way at this point that we're finally able to see those yellows and reds coming through on our end.
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Answer:
The frequency of this wave is .
Explanation:
The frequency of a wave is the number of wavelengths that this wave covers in unit time (typically a second.)
The wave in this question travels at . In other words, this wave covers
in unit time (a second.) How many wavelengths
would that
correspond to?
The question states that the wavelength of this wave is . Therefore, there would be
wavelengths in the
span that this wave covered in the unit time of one second (
.) Hence, the frequency of this wave would be
(three per second,) which is equivalent to
(three Hertzs.)
In general, the frequency of a wave with speed
and wavelength
would be:
.
For the wave in this question:
.