Light scattering

Okay kiddo, so you know how sometimes when the sun is shining, you can see little sparkles in the air? That's because light is getting scattered.

Light scattering is basically what happens when light waves bump into tiny things like atoms, molecules, or little bits of dust in the air. When they do, the light wave changes direction and goes bouncing off in a different direction. This can cause the light to spread out in all different directions, which makes it look like it's glowing or shimmering.

Think of it like throwing a ball at a wall covered in bumps - the ball will bounce off in all sorts of different directions because of the bumps. The same thing happens with light, which is made up of teeny tiny particles called photons. When these photons hit something small, they scatter in all sorts of directions.

Light scattering happens all the time, even when it's not sunny. You might have noticed that the sky looks bluer than usual sometimes, or that sunrises and sunsets have really pretty colors. That's also because of light scattering! During the day, the blue light in the sky gets scattered around a lot, which makes it appear bluer than it really is. At sunrise and sunset, the light has to travel through a lot more of the atmosphere to reach us, and that causes more scattering, which makes everything all orange and pink and pretty.

So there you have it, kiddo - light scattering is just what happens when light waves bump into tiny things and go bouncing off in different directions, making everything look sparkly and pretty.