Gas is colorless and basically invisible from the naked eye. What’s the wavy-gas that we see in extreme heats?

Question

Gas is colorless and basically invisible from the naked eye. What’s the wavy-gas that we see in extreme heats?

In: Chemistry

Answer 1

Gases come in many colours, air is colourless until you look at the sky and it clearly isn’t. Anyway you can see “waves” from hot air rising. The hot air is less dense and refracts light differently from the air it rises through. Essentially the air is always a lens your brain is ignoring and the rising hot air makes imperfections big enough that you notice