Cab you help explain it? I thought that the sky was blue because it reflects the ocean and because of rayleigh scattering, but do either of these affect the color of plants?
Comment on That's just science
gwl@lemmy.blahaj.zone 16 hours agoThe thing is it’s kinda right, just lacking detail
hirihit640@sh.itjust.works 15 hours ago
ilinamorato@lemmy.world 15 hours ago
You’ve got it partially backwards. The sky is blue because of Rayleigh scattering, but it doesn’t reflect the ocean; the ocean is blue because it reflects the sky.
Incidentally, I’ve heard it said (I think it was xkcd) that we use the term “Rayleigh scattering” because it sounds silly to say that the air is blue (via the mechanism of Rayleigh scattering); so maybe that’s part of it?
Ratio_Tile@lemmy.blahaj.zone 14 hours ago
The bit about the ocean being blue because it reflects the sky is unfortunately mostly wrong. Water is slightly more blue than ozone, so the more of it there is (big water in big ocean) the more blue it will look. The fact that it’s also reflecting the blue sky adds to the color, but on a cloudy day the ocean is still blue.
ilinamorato@lemmy.world 13 hours ago
I’m about a kilometer from the ocean right now (I’m standing in front of the window through which I can see it), and it’s a partly cloudy day. When the sky is clear (as it was five minutes ago), the ocean is a rich, saturated blue or even teal. When it’s cloudy (as it is currently), I can see that it’s a cool gray color. I might call it a very dark, desaturated cyan at most. So from my observation it has to be the opposite: the relative blueness of the ozone and the water must be the less dependent factor, and the color of the sky the more dependent one.
It’s tricky, though. I guess I might be in a place with weird salinity or plankton or something.
phonics@lemmy.world 14 hours ago
Plants are green because they absorb all other wavelengths of light. And bounce the green into your eye. In actual fact, color only exists in your brain as a way to understand the world around us. Our eyes are just sensors that detect light. And color is how we process it. We could have evolved into understanding it in different ways too, like smell. Therefore color doesnt even exist in the and natural world. Green is just an illusion of our mind.
Trail@lemmy.world 3 hours ago
Color exists physically as different wavelengths of light. The thing “in your mind” is about non-natural colors which trigger multiple light cones in your eye and your brain interprets them a certain way different than the natural colors. In that sense you do interpret the wavelengths one way or another in your head, but the actual light wavelengths so exist.
phonics@lemmy.world 1 hour ago
Yeah wavelengths exist. But ALL color only exists in your mind as perception. Natural and non natural.
If color existed outside of light touching your eye, you would be able to deduce it without light.
Fun to think about.
AlchemicalAgent@mander.xyz 14 hours ago
This is kinda away from the other replies to your comment. But I took that meme as saying plants get CO2 from the air (blue - scattering) and use sunlight (yellow - not really but meh) to produce many things with it, including chlorophyll which is the green pigment in plants.
MalReynolds@slrpnk.net 14 hours ago
Wow, wrong, Do some research, but I will help if needed (seriously, DM me or whatever) but why not do it publicly, You’re asking the right questions and that counts for a lot.
Reflecting the ocean is not a thing, but rayleigh scattering is a real reason for blue sky.
Science rocks.
isleepinahammock@lemmy.blahaj.zone 13 hours ago
Deeper, I would simply say that the sky is blue because air is blue. You cite Rayleigh scattering, but you’re just describing how light interacts with air. The only reason any material has any color is because how it interacts with light.
Air is blue. You can explain its blueness just like you can the physics origin of any other object’s color. But ultimately the sky is blue because air is blue.
ranzispa@mander.xyz 12 hours ago
This is indeed a valid theory, but not very powerful since it can only explain the color of green plants and not for example the color of non green plants or animals.
More powerful theories have been developed which can work on a much broader range of applications. For example the theory that plants are the color they are because God painted them that way.
BCsven@lemmy.ca 9 hours ago
Plants look green because the green spectrum has a lot of energy, and to stop over heating and leaf burning and messing with the delicate photosynthesis, plants reflect or let green mostly pass through and only use about 20% of green soecturm energy, while mostly use all of red end and blue end… At least that’s what I heard on a science show.