Still, the sun is white. Sun light is white.

Are you saying the blue light is removed from the spectrum when it's passes through the atmosphere? I assume you aren't since you said scattered, but also imply the sun is yellow because blue is removed.

If we're talking about sun light during sunrise or sunset then yes it gets red at more extreme angles. But the sun isn't that color all day.

Still, the sun is white. Sun light is white.

That's why I said "appears to be yellow".

Are you saying the blue light is removed from the spectrum when it’s passes through the atmosphere?

The light from the sun is made up of a whole variety of wavelengths. You can see that when there's a rainbow and every wavelength from red to orange to yellow all the way to violet is represented. This light arrives in a continuous stream of individual photons.

When short wavelength photons (blue wavelengths down to violet wavelengths and below) hit the atmosphere, they're more likely to be scattered by air in the atmosphere. Because of that, they still hit the ground, but they're no longer coming from a direct line from the sun. That's why when you look up at the sky you see it as being blue, because photons that weren't originally heading toward you were scattered and come towards you from a random direction.

The longer wavelengths, from green on up aren't as likely to be scattered by the atmosphere, so they mostly come in a direct line from the sun to your eye.

As a result, if you look directly at the sun (which you generally shouldn't do) it will appear to be more yellow than it actually is. Astronauts above the atmosphere see the sun as appearing fully white. But, on the surface we see it as white minus all the blue that was scattered. The result is that the sun appears to be yellow when you're on the surface with the atmosphere scattering things.

At sunrise and sunset there's even more scattering. Now even larger particles are involved, and there's more atmosphere to shine through. The blue is removed, but so is a lot of the green and yellow, leaving only the red, which is the least likely to be scattered since it has the longest wavelengths.

So, at sunrise and sunset the sun can appear reddish. At noon it can appear yellowish. But, if you go above the atmosphere so the blue doesn't get scattered, you'll see that it's actually white.

I mean, I love it and thanks for sharing, but it's a pretty poor discernment for why "blue air" makes chlorophyll green. Sure, plants might be opportunistic in a respect and attempt to move to a color direction that gathers the maximum amount of the sun's rays. Why was the initial post, "sky blue, sun yellowish = plant green"? Why was that met with agreement?

It's not something that any Biologist would yield to as an explanation. Even if they respected themselves. (Sorry, Biologists. I know.)

I'm obviously talking about tangible physical objects you see every day. I'm talking about lived experience. Most things you encounter are obviously a certain color, transparent, or some amount of reflective. The sky and butterfly wings whose material are not actually that color and pretty normal things to ponder.

Thank you so much for this comment. I have a graduate degree in plant genetics and I had never been exposed to this before and you just made my whole day by teaching me this!

How do you know so much about photosynthesis?

My partner recently graduated with a horticulture degree and at the time I originally learned this I was a physics major. Photosynthesis was a neat overlap of our fields.

Some are.