Cars warm up in the sun due to the greenhouse effect: Sunlight passing through the windows into the car is mostly absorbed by interior surfaces, then radiated back to the air as heat. That heat does not pass back through the glass, which is an effective insulator for radiation, and the inside temperature can rise above the outside temperature.

“The visible radiation that we see is transparent to the glass but thermal radiation is not and gets trapped by the glass,” Klein says. “As a consequence, the inside of the car will warm because radiation is coming in but not much is going back out.”

The interior color may make a small difference in internal temperature, he says, because darker internal surfaces will absorb slightly more solar energy than light ones do.

Tinted glass will have an even more pronounced effect, he says, by reducing how much solar radiation enters the vehicle in the first place.

That’s not to say mosquitoes target certain people because they’re tastier or have higher quality blood. Rather, it’s all about how easy you are to locate. “The main things are how you smell and how hot you are,” Paskewitz says.

Cues like body temperature, carbon dioxide in the breath, and certain skin chemicals, such as lactic acid, all help mosquitoes orient and find their next blood meal. This means that exercise – which boosts the levels of all three signals – makes us much more appealing to mosquitoes than when we’re just sitting around.

Evidence also suggests that mosquitoes home in better on certain colors or patterns. For example, donning a black shirt instead of a white one may lead to more bites. Less certain is whether perfumes or other body products attract the pests. But mosquitoes do sip nectar in addition to blood, so avoiding products with floral scents might be wise, Paskewitz says.

Everyone’s best bets for preventing bites include wearing long sleeves and pants, and steering clear of shady areas and vegetation. Paskewitz has also been compiling the science on various mosquito-repelling products and home remedies, as well as testing the effectiveness of a few herself.

The results can be found on her Web site.

Scattering affects the color of light coming from the sky, but the details are determined by the wavelength of the light and the size of the particle. The short-wavelength blue and violet are scattered by molecules in the air much more than other colors of the spectrum. This is why blue and violet light reaches our eyes from all directions on a clear day. But because we can’t see violet very well, the sky appears blue.

Scattering also explains the colors of the sunrise and sunset, Ackerman says.

“Because the sun is low on the horizon, sunlight passes through more air at sunset and sunrise than during the day, when the sun is higher in the sky. More atmosphere means more molecules to scatter the violet and blue light away from your eyes. If the path is long enough, all of the blue and violet light scatters out of your line of sight. The other colors continue on their way to your eyes. This is why sunsets are often yellow, orange, and red.”

And because red has the longest wavelength of any visible light, the sun is red when it’s on the horizon, where its extremely long path through the atmosphere blocks all other colors.