If you are a science teacher you have heard this question a million times. If you are a student you have asked this question a million times to either: a) test the teacher b) test a parent’s patience or c) because you didn’t get an answer you can understand. It’s easy to feel confused. Explaining why can be as confusing as describing how direct tv satellite works. When teachers start talking about the spectrum of light and refracting of the atmosphere there is a switch in the back of a students brain that tells the student to go to sleep, drool, or roll their eyes into the back of their head. For those students I can’t help you unfortunately not teacher will help that student. They simply wanted to ask a joke that they didn’t think you knew so that it would get a laugh.

For students that have a honest thirst for knowledge this is a sure fire way to start an interesting class.

1. Ask the students why the sky is blue.
2. Watch the gears try to turn and the smoke roll out of their ears.
3. Let them know that you can tell them why there is a rainbow a blue sky and a red sunset all in one model.
4. Make a class out of the most interesting subject for us and the most boring subject turned interesting for them.
5. Do your best to not use any words that cause the snooze switch to flip until the end of class when you tell them to take notes or you pass out a paper with terms and definitions.

Some easy ways to get rid of those snooze switch words are:

• Instead of saying Spectrum say rainbow
• Instead of saying Atmosphere say sky
• Instead of saying Refract say split or scatter

Your general explanation should sound something similar to:

Why is the sky blue? In the afternoon the sky shows a bright blue but in the evening the sky turns shades of orange and red. Why is that? Why is a rainbow so many colors and why does it only show up after rain? I can tell you. The way the sky is made up splits and scatters the rainbow of colors that our eyes see. During the day the sun is angled in such a way that we see a beautiful blue sky. When it is evening the sun is hitting in a different angle and because of that we see reds and oranges. When it rains we see the same effect except on trillions of water droplets. (Hand class terms and definitions) Who wants to do an experiment with rainbows?

That should get you started without a problem.