Why ocean seems to be blue when water is colourless?

Question

Why ocean seems to be blue when water is colourless?

Answer 1

the minerals that the water contains...and the reflection of the sky...

Answer 2

Its a reflection of the sky...any body of water would look grey under a heavy grey sky....

Answer 3

The salt water is colourless!

The ocean often looks blue, light-blue, green, light-green or gray, cause sunlight shines on tiny particles suspended in the water and the presence of floating plants/microscope living animals.

Flying offshore, from south to the north of Brazil, we can see these variations of colour on the ocean, (blue till light-green).

Answer 4

its the reflection from the sky, or colours from plants etc living in it

Answer 5

its a reflection of the sky

Answer 6

It reflects light that has been scattered by the atmosphere. The fluctuation scattering favours the blue wavelengths of light.

Answer 7

It seems blue primarily because it is blue (slightly anyway)due to dissolved minerals.  A secondary effect called rayleigh scattering is also in effect where light transmitted through a body of water is split into different wavelengths due to interaction with the moecule in the water.

It is a myth that it is a reflection of sky.

The colour can be seen in large bodies of water irrespective of sky colour.

Answer 8

Water is not actually colourless, it has a faint blue colour in mass. Water actually absorbs the red light.

The stuff in the water like silt particles and salt molecules have more of an effect though. The effect is the same as the scatterring of light in the atmosphere.

Answer 9

Water is slightly blue and it looks more blue because of reflection of blue sky. And ocean is not totally blue in all places.

Answer 10

The ocean often looks blue because sunlight shines on tiny particles suspended in the water. Along the shores of some areas, however, the water looks green because the blue water is mixed with yellow pigments present in floating plants.

The Black Sea looks black because it has little oxygen and a high concentration of hydrogen sulfide.

The Red Sea looks red because it contains seasonal blooms of algae that color the surface water red.

The Yellow Sea looks yellow because it contains a yellow mud carried into it by adjoining rivers.

Answer 11

Water has a slight bluish coloration.  That is its nature.  It takes a lot of water before the blue coloration is really obvious, that is all.  Has nothing to do with the sky, and only partly to do with suspended and dissolved solids (these can affect the coloration).

Water absorbs energy on the red end of the spectrum.  For this reason, water vapor is a greenhouse gas-it lets in the light from the shorter wavelength end of the spectrum and captures the longer (red-end) waves of heat reflecting back, preventing heat loss into space.

Just do a search on the absorption spectrum of water and you will see that the blue end passes through and the red end doesn't.  That is exactly what gives objects their colors, the nature of the light that is reflected or transmitted rather than absorbed.

Water is a naturally blue substance.

Answer 12

Water is NOT colourless it is very very slightly blue as id absorbs a small amount of red. the deeper the water the obvious this colour is and as the ocean is very deep it appears a blue/turquoise colour ifpure and often blue/green if its full of plankton.

ice is pure water and that appears blue .

its all about the density of the substance and the amount you're looking through.

it has nothing to do with the colour of the sky.  that is blue because  nirtogen scatters blue light more than red so over head you see blue sky but at sunset when the light is coming more direct it gets redder and redder as sunset approaches.

Answer 13

it is what our brain projects to our eyes,