What exactly is scattering ?

[suvendu]

what is scattering ?

what is scattering ? i am not able to understand what actually does it mean? i know due to this phenomenna sky is blueand several other phenomenna.i also know scattering is inversly propotional to 4rth power of wavelength.so please give some more insight abt this.

 

[aryajur]

Re: what is scattering ?

Scatterring is due to the travelling of an electromagnetic wave across materials of different properties or through materials of continuously varying properties. At the boundary of change the magnitude of the Orthogonal components of the Electric and Magnetic fields change according to Maxwell's Laws and so the speed and direction of different frequencies become different after the interface if they were same before it. So this is how different frequencies are scatterred.

 

[flatulent]

Re: what is scattering ?

Scattering usually means reflections from small objects at many angles as opposed to reflection from a plane where the reflections are all at the same angle.

In the sky there are two methods. One is scattering from small particles. The other is from the dielectric constant from the gas and charged particle densities changing with altitude. These are frequency dependent.