What causes light to scatter away?

Light scatters away when it runs into something that isn’t smooth or clear.

Imagine you're playing with marbles on a bumpy floor. When the marbles hit the bumps, they bounce off in different directions instead of going straight. That’s like what happens to light, when it hits something uneven or not transparent, it bounces around instead of passing through or going straight.

Think of light as cars driving on a road. If the road is smooth and clear, all the cars keep moving in the same direction. But if the road has lots of potholes or is covered in leaves, the cars swerve and go different ways, that’s scattering!

If you shine a flashlight through a glass of water with some dirt in it, you’ll see the light spread out instead of staying focused. That's because the tiny bits of dirt are like little bumps on the road for the light.

Sometimes, when light scatters, we can see it, like when the sky turns red at sunset, or when you look at a glowing lamp from the side and it looks blurry. It’s all just light bouncing around in different directions!