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Where does the white go when the snow melts?
I'm curious
6 Answers
- Anonymous7 years agoFavorite Answer
I am presuming you are a troll, but I'll educate you anyway.
Snow is white because there are many air spaces, which reflect light around, and the light bounces all around the snow. This reflection of white light into your eyes gives it a white appearance
When the snow melts, and becomes liquid, these air gaps disappear. Water is able to refract light, and light is refracted and absorbed rather than reflected, and so white light does not leave it again
- 7 years ago
Frozen water is clear. Snow is frozen water. So why is it not clear as well? A common misconception is that ice is transparent. Well, it's not. It's actually translucent, meaning that light does not go through it in a direct path, rather, it bounces off of it in a different direction. When light hits a layers of snow, it is altered by all of the ice crystals, and it eventually comes right back out because of all of the direction changes, resulting in white snow. When it melts back into water, the ice crystals become less dense, and turn into water molecules (physical transformation). The light has no where to bounce off of, and simply passes right through (because of the molecular structure of water is not very close to the height of wavelengths, the light photons will not interact within the structures) This is why water is clear.
So in short, snow is white because light bounces off of it. When it melts, light goes through it, making it look clear instead of white.
- Anonymous7 years ago
Lmao!
This is a fuunny question...
Well it melts causing it to loose its color, the white color is caused by molecules.
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- Anonymous7 years ago
Good question....Very good question..