Why Is Snow White? | HowStuffWorks

Since snow is frozen water, and everyone knows that frozen water, freed from impurities, is obvious, why does snow have a particular coloration? To know this, we have to have a look at a bit of ice. Ice is not transparent; it is really translucent. Which means the sunshine photons do not move proper by way of the fabric in a direct path; reasonably the fabric’s particles change the sunshine’s course.

This occurs as a result of the distances between some atoms within the ice’s molecular construction are near the peak of sunshine wavelengths, which implies the sunshine photons will work together with the buildings. The result’s that the sunshine photon’s path is altered, and it exits the ice in a unique course than it entered the ice.

Snow is comprised of a bunch of particular person ice crystals organized collectively. When a light-weight photon enters a layer of snow, it goes by way of an ice crystal on the highest, which modifications its course barely and sends it on to a brand new ice crystal, which does the identical factor.

Mainly, the crystals bounce the sunshine throughout in order that the sunshine comes proper again out of the snow pile. Snow does the identical factor to all of the completely different gentle frequencies, so all colours of sunshine are bounced again out.

The “coloration” of all of the frequencies within the seen spectrum mixed in equal measure is white, so that is the colour we see in snow, although white is not the colour we “see” within the particular person ice crystals that type snow.

And sure, snow can look blueish-white or pinkish-white relying on how the solar hits it or if it is in shadow (or yellow if the neighborhood canine occurs upon it), because the National Center for Atmospheric Research reminds us. Snow can also be red when it is filled with algae.

Initially Printed: Nov 30, 2000