How far away is the sky?

[Alex Franke]

It's another question that my four year old asked that I couldn't quite come up with a good answer for.

Anyone want to take a stab at it?

[BearPipes-1]

"You're standing in it right now."

That wasn't accepted at first, so I brought up a few paintings using a Google image search, showing that the blue starts immediately after the ground stops.

But I've got no problem confusing kids.

[Pappy]

It starts just above where the ground ends. Have the kid look up and ask if he sees the sky. Lay him down on his back and point out that the sky still looks the same.

Or tell him his mother wants him!

[crokett]

My oldest asked me that. I told her it was 30,000 feet away. Seemed as good an answer as any. Then she said 'my feet or your feet?' I asked why and she said 'because yours are bigger'. So then I had to explain measurements.

[Thalermade]

Remember to tell your spouse when you give kids explanations.
Many moons ago, our then a few years old son asked why it got dark at night.
I explained the Sun was like a flashlight and the Earth was a big ball which turned slowly around, and that the light from the Sun only shined (shone?) on the part of the ball facing the Sun.

A couple days later when he was riding in the car with his Mom, he said "Mom, do you wont' to know why it gets dark at night?" she laguhed and said yes she would like to know. She nearly wrecked when he repeated my little speech nearly verbatim.

Oh, in case you haven't been told, the questions do really get harder the older they get. so to answer the question, the sky starts at the ground and goes on forever, farther than we can see.

Russ

[MikeMcCoy]

Or tell him his mother wants him!

That gets my vote

[LCHIEN]

actually it goes on until about 80,000-100,000 feet, after you go higher than that the blue "sky" becomes black space. At 30,000 feet, where airliners fly there's still plenty of sky above. Pretty much that's coincident with the atmosphere, where the blue sky disappears there's also not much air to speak of.

[430752]

yeah, but sky does go on "forever" since when we're asking about the sky we're asking about the visual observation which we know as sky. That visual observation is due in part, becuase of black space behind it. I mean I reckon that if it were red space behind it our sky wouldn't be the lovely shade of blue as we know it. So, the sky does go on forever since the black space is part of the sky, it makes it what we see it as. The atmosphere stops at 100000 feet or whatever it is.

[radhak]

Frankly - I think for the 'blue' to be seen, we need some distance first. Air, or atmosphere is not blue. And if you there's any object between you and the blue, you don't see blue because you see light reflected off that object, and we don't see sunlight reflected off oxygen atoms (which is what the blue is).

So what I am getting at, is that the sky is at least so far that nothing can get 'behind' it - so, more that 30,000 ft (since aircrafts go there). Remember, when you look at the ground from flight it's not blue. While everything above ground is the atmosphere, the sky is still out of reach!

[crokett]

actually it goes on until about 80,000-100,000 feet, after you go higher than that the blue "sky" becomes black space. At 30,000 feet, where airliners fly there's still plenty of sky above. Pretty much that's coincident with the atmosphere, where the blue sky disappears there's also not much air to speak of.

I know how far it goes but 30000 seemed as good a number as any. I tried using 'forever' first but she is likes an actual number. I didn't want to have to explain what the atmosphere is, etc.

[BadeMillsap]

My daughter answered this question for herself at the age of about 5 ....

... she had drawn a picture of our house ..... there was brown/green "dirt/grass" at the bottom of the page ... covered about 1/3 of the vertical space ... then in the top 1/3 she had colored blue "sky" with a few clouds ... when she came to show me the picture she pointed to the blue and said here is the sky ... then she pointed to the brown/green and said here is the ground ... so I asked her ... what is this space between the ground and the sky that you didn't color? ... she pondered that for a while ... and decided it too was sky ... just very close to the ground ... I've always been happy she drew that picture ... it clarified a lot of things I had always wondered about

She's 28 now and a 2nd grade teacher ... I wonder if she gets any "blank space" in pictures from her students .... and if so if she remembers that picture she drew as fondly as I do.

[430752]

by the way, where do you all live that you see blue skies? I've heard them spoken about, and seen fantastical movies about them, but aren't all skies kinda the same sooty green/yellow/grey I see everyday outside my window?

[Alex Franke]

I can almost hear him asking, "Why do they call them skyscrapers if the sky starts at the ground?" or "Why don't you put your arms down when you 'reach for the sky'?"

Seems to me that the "sky" is always up. So then the sky would be anything above the tallest thing around you at the time, until you get out of the atmosphere.

When he asked, I told him, "Good question. Let's both think about it and talk about it later when I get home from work." Now I have a couple different perspectives to talk with him about!