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Why is the ocean blue? |
Everything Water
Have you ever wondered why the ocean is blue? Why isn't it purple, red or yellow? To understand why the ocean is blue, we need to explore how light works. Believe it or not, they are related!!
The light that shines down from the sun is called white light but it is actually made up of a rainbow if colors- red, orange, yellow, green, blue, indigo and violet. Pretty! When white light hits the ocean, the yellow, red and orange colors are absorbed or sucked in by the water so they kind of disappear. The blue light or energy is only absorbed a little bit, but mostly it reflects back at us. There are also little, tiny particles in the ocean that bounce the blue or green light through the water and right back out of the ocean. So we see blue!
As we learned, white light is made up of different colors or waves of energy, and these colors have different wavelengths. Blue light has the shortest wavelength of all and therefore it is bounced around in the atmosphere more than the other colors. Which is why the ocean looks blue, and so does the sky!!
Water Colors
Bodies of water, such as oceans, rivers and lakes can be pretty colorful. Have you ever seen a pond that looked a little green? How about an ocean that was slightly red? How about turquoise? After what we just learned about light hitting water, why do you think that could be?
Want a few ideas? The depth of the water can make the water seem more or less blue. Plants floating around can make it look green. A special kind of algae can make the ocean look red. It's a pretty colorful world we live in!
