chapotraphouse

Relevant XKCD quote I think of frequently:

Normal light interacts with the atmosphere through Rayleigh scattering. You may have heard of Rayleigh scattering as the answer to "why is the sky blue." This is sort of true, but honestly, a better answer to this question might be "because air is blue." Sure, it appears blue for a bunch of physics reasons, but everything appears the color it is for a bunch of physics reasons.

When you ask, "Why is the statue of liberty green?" the answer is something like, "The outside of the statue is copper, so it used to be copper-colored. Over time, a layer of copper carbonate formed (through oxidation), and copper carbonate is green." You don't say "The statue is green because of frequency-specific absorption and scattering by surface molecules."

So yes, they are blue. They're just blue for a slightly less common reason than other blue things.

You see the light reflecting from paint doesn't actually become blue, it loses yellow

so if i put spectrophotometer, it won't show spike at 460 nm?

well, yes, it would

fucking nerds

They're red-jays, you just can't tell because they're flying so fast directly at you.

IDK that sounds exactly like how light works

I remember seeing a whole ass nerd video talking about it and the only true blue animals are a butterfly and a frog

~~kkkandain$$~~

kkklanadian$$

$ee me after klaSS

Did you know that the robin isn't really visible? We only see it as visible because light bounces off of it and enters our eyes.

the guy who named it a "blue jay" was a lying piece of shit, never to be trusted

shoulda called it the "actually not blue you dumb motherfucker jay" instead

Yeah fuck Canada!

What's the joke though?

That is how light works there, its subsurface scattering or thin film interference (don't remember which) isn't it?

(Norm MacDonald voice) That's very uninteresting

That's a gorgeous bird right there fr