Blue

A clear sky on a sunny day is coloured blue because of Rayleigh scattering of the light from the Sun. Large amounts of water (H₂O) look blue because red light around 750 nm is absorbed as an overtone of the O-H stretching vibration. Interestingly, heavy water (D₂O) is colourless, because the absorption band is at a longer wavelength (~950 nm).

An example of a blue color in the RGB color space has intensities [0, 0, 255] on a 0 to 255 scale. On a browser that supports visual formatting in Cascading Style Sheets, the following box should appear in this color:

The English language commonly uses "blue" to refer to any color from blue to cyan.

Usage, symbolism, colloquial expressions

• The colloquial expression "blue" is used to describe melancholy or sadness in English speaking countries. See also Blues music.
• The word "blue" is often used in reference to the Police force; e.g. "Boys in Blue", "the blue line"
• Blue is also the color of many police uniforms. Police in the Peoples Republic of China changed the color of the uniforms from green to blue in the late 1990s partly to emphasize their civilian role.
• Blue is the color of many air force dress uniforms including those of the United States.
• Blue is used to denote the working class (due to the usual color of working clothes). Blue-collar workers are industrial workers as opposed to white-collar office workers.
• The phrase "of blue blood" is used to mean "from an aristocratic background", because a pale, untanned skin allows blue-tinged veins to show through.
• A "Blue movie" is a slang term for a pornographic film. There are also "Blue magazines". This term is more common in Great Britain than the United States.
• Users of Microsoft Windows often use the term "blue" to describe a computer that has encountered a blue screen of death.
• "Blue laws" is a slang term for laws regulating issues of morality, such as alcohol, gambling, or sexually-explicit materials.
• "Blue ribbon" is a term used to describe something of high quality, such as a blue ribbon panel or a blue ribbon commission. This usage comes from the practice of awarding blue ribbons for first place in certain athletic or other competitive endeavors.
• In Australia, a "blue" can also describe a fight or an argument.
• The German word for blue is used for "drunk".
• In Japanese, the word for blue is used for "young".
• In Russian, the word for blue is slang for "gay".
• Blue often denoted injury since it is the color of a bruise.
• In medical diagrams, blue is used to represent veins carrying deoxygenated blood back to the heart. Deoxygenated blood is actually reddish violet.
• Politically: Electoral maps in the United States usually use blue for the Democratic Party. Those in the United Kingdom use blue for the Conservative Party (which uses blue as one of its symbols). In Taiwan, the blue is the symbol for the Kuomintang and has been used as the emblem for unification leaning parties. Internationally, blue is the color for conservatives (with notable exceptions; see Political party).
• Blue is used to represent the Union in the American Civil War in opposition to the Confederate gray, both based on the uniforms worn by the respective armies.
• Azzurro (a light blue) is the national color of Italy.
• "Big Blue" is a nickname for IBM.
• A blue moon is the second full moon in a calendar month, or a moon that appears blue because of particles in the atmosphere. Both are uncommon enough that "once in a blue moon" means "almost never."

Music

Blue[?] is also the title of an album by the Canadian singer/songwriter Joni Mitchell.

Kind of Blue is the title of an album by Miles Davis, which has become one of the biggest selling jazz recordings in history.

Blue Train[?] is the title of an influential jazz album by John Coltrane

See also:

• Blues
• Trois Coleurs: Bleu
• Derek Jarman's Blue
• Blue (1968 movie)[?]
• Blue (1992 movie)[?]
• Blue (2001 movie)
• Blue (2002 movie)