[[A woman with a ponytail leans back on her office chair, back to her computer, gesturing as she speaks to a little girl in front of her.]]
Girl: Mommy, why is the sky blue?
Mother: Rayleigh scattering! Short wavelengths get scattered
way
more (proportional to 1
lambda^4). Blue light dominates because it's so short.
Girl: Oh. So why
isn't
the sky violet?
Mother: Well, because, uh... ...hmm.
{{Title text: Feynman recounted another good one upperclassmen would use on freshmen physics students: When you look at words in a mirror, how come they're reversed left to right but not top to bottom? What's special about the horizontal axis?}}
xkcd.com is best viewed with Netscape Navigator 4.0 or below on a Pentium 3±1 emulated in Javascript on an Apple IIGS at a screen resolution of 1024x1. Please enable your ad blockers, disable high-heat drying, and remove your device from Airplane Mode and set it to Boat Mode. For security reasons, please leave caps lock on while browsing.