Why is snow white?

Question

Water is transparent/colourless so how come snow is white?

Answer 1

Bright marshmallow-colored snow blinds us with its gleaming white color because it reflects beams of white light. Instead of absorbing light, snow's complex structure prevents the light from shining through its lattice formation. A beam of white sunlight entering a snow bank is so quickly scattered by a zillion ice crystals and air pockets that most of the light comes bouncing right back out of the snow bank. What little sunlight is absorbed by snow is absorbed equally over the wavelengths of visible light thus giving snow its white appearance. So while many natural objects get their blue, red, and yellow colors from absorbing light, snow is stuck with its white color because it reflects light.

Answer 2

A collection of number of ice crystals are known as snow. When light falls on the layer of snow it passes from ice crystals on top. The light slightly moves from its original path then it moves onto another crystal where again it deviates. This process continues, and after bouncing from all the surfaces and the crystals light reflects back out of the snow. So all the wavelengths of light in visible spectrum (red, orange, yellow, blue, indigo, violet) combines with each other in almost equal ratio and we see the white color of snow. When all the wavelengths of visible spectrum are reflected and are combined in almost equal measure they always give a white light leaving the object appear white. When snow turns to liquid wavelength of colors passes straight without reflecting much and the whitening gradually disappears.

Answer 3

Ice is not transparent; it's actually translucent. This means that the light photons don't pass right through the material in a direct path -- the material's particles change the light's direction. This happens because the distances between some atoms in the ice's molecular structure are close to the height of light wavelengths, which means the light photons will interact with the structures. The result is that the light photon's path is altered and it exits the ice in a different direction than it entered the ice. Snow is a whole bunch of individual ice crystals arranged together. When a light photon enters a layer of snow, it goes through an ice crystal on the top, which changes its direction slightly and sends it on to a new ice crystal, which does the same thing. Basically, all the crystals bounce the light all around so that it comes right back out of the snow pile. It does the same thing to all the different light frequencies, so all colors of light are bounced back out. The "color" of all the frequencies in the visible spectrum combined in equal measure is white, so this is the color we see in snow, while it's not the color we see in the individual ice crystals that form snow.