Why is the ocean blue?

The ocean is not always blue and not everywhere. In some places, it is blue because it reflects the color of the sky.

Why Is The Ocean Blue

When sunlight hits the ocean it is scattered by the water molecules that make up the ocean. Sunlight is made up of all of the colors of the rainbow (red through violet). Water molecules scatter blue light the most. This makes the ocean look blue.
Sometimes the ocean doesn't appear blue! Many parts of the ocean look green. This is because the blue we would normally see is mixed with the yellow coloring of floating plants...blue and yellow make green!

Another example of water not looking blue is the Yellow Sea. It looks yellow because of the great amounts of yellow mud carried into the Sea by rivers.

The color of the ocean is blue due to the chemical makeup of the ocean (mostly H2O) and the amount of light being absorbed. It's not the light being absorbed that you are seeing,but the remainder of light being reflected into your eyes. Color is kind of tricky to explain in that color does not exist. all that the eyes are doing is measuring radiation in the form of light and converting it into color to separate lower radiation from higher ones. The reason why the sky is blue is the same reason why the ocean is blue http://answers.yahoo.com/question/index?qid=20070206203328AAEuJ0a the water vapor for the most part in air is what give it the blue color, but wait why is the clouds white then??? Well the clouds are white due to the fact that they are more dense and the fact that they are also saturated in charges repelling light particles. No, No that can't be because water should be denser then clouds. Yes water is denser then clouds, but they are not charged like clouds hence it will absorb light instead of repelling it. You can see whiteness of water on the surface when the sun is setting and you see it as a shimmering reflective surface that is kind of white. Here is a simple formulation I made up to get color:

Light + substance + density of the substance + absorption = reflection of the remainder of energy into your eyes (color). This can be best seen in planets or our moon.

Moon has no atmosphere hence it absorbs 0% of light reflecting 100% light back into your eyes causing it to look white.

Earth = dense atmosphere = most of the light being absorbed = blue(low in energy).

Mars = low density atmosphere = low amount being absorbed = red(high in energy).

This is not your conventional science so don't try to understand it if your doing it for class assignments. The above is my crazy way of seeing science that I just made up for people to get what is happening when we see things. come visit my site

http://www.fattifrog.com

and soon I will get my crazy science section up.

Sunlight is made up of all the colors of the rainbow: red, orange, yellow, green, blue, and violet. Some of the sunlight is reflected off the surface of the water, reflecting the color of the sky. Some of the sunlight penetrates the water and is scattered by ripples and particles in the water (this tinges the appearance of the ocean with the color of the particles). In deep water, much of the sunlight is scattered by the oxygen in the water, and this scatters more of the blue light.

Water absorbs more of the red light in sunlight; the water also enhances the scattering of blue light. Sir Chandrasekhar Venkata Raman (an Indian physicist) won the Nobel prize in 1930 for his work on light.

Hope I helped you. :)
Miana

The ocean is blue because water absorbs colors in the red part of the light spectrum. Like a filter, this leaves behind colors in the blue part of the light spectrum for us to see.
The ocean may also take on green, red, or other hues as light bounces off of floating sediments and particles in the water.

Most of the ocean, however, is completely dark. Hardly any light penetrates deeper than 200 meters (656 feet), and no light penetrates deeper than 2,000 meters (3,280 feet ).
oceanservice.noaa.gov/facts/oceanblue.ht...

reflection of the sky
at night its not blue anymore
its dark