Raleigh, the scientist who defined the reason for the blue color of the sky, faced a big question: Why is the color of the sea blue?
Raleigh explained that the reflection of the sky is the reason for the blue color of the sea. This explanation was believed by the scientific world for a long time.
In 1921, when Sir CV Raman was traveling by sea from England to India, he became suspicious of Raleigh’s explanation. Because the sea is blue when the sea is rough and the sky is full of clouds. If it is due to the reflection of the sky, shouldn’t the sea be black when the sky is full of clouds?
CV Raman came to Kolkata and studied the interaction between molecules and light. Then, in the following year, he prepared and sent a paper on the interaction between light and molecules in the Royal Society Journal. This was later published. This was known as the ‘Raman effect’.
The blue color on the surface of the sea is due to the light bouncing off the water molecules. This is the phenomenon of ordinary light scattering. But the intense blue color in the deep parts of the ocean is also due to the absorption of light.
That is, as light travels farther through water, light with lower energy and longer wavelengths is absorbed. Then only the part near the blue color with shorter wavelength and more energy is seen. This is how CV Raman explained the blue color of the sea. He was awarded the Nobel Prize in Physics in 1930 for his discovery of the Raman effect.
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