Why r clouds white and grey?

Question

I was wondering, whay r clouds white?

Answer 1

caz clouds are made out of 0-4 percent smog (which is anything like engine exhaust and stuff like that) and what ever percent it goes up, it takes off on another substence like water vapor or oxygen. so the more percent smog takes up, the more darker the cloud is.(why they are grey when they rain is because rain is just changing color with smog, but dont worry they dont mix)

Answer 2

Clouds are white because they equally scatter different wavelengths of visible light. How dark they are depends upon how tall they are. Taller clouds absorb, scatter, and reflect more incoming solar radiation. For example, cumulonimbus clouds are very dark because they reflect a lot of light because of their towering heights.

Answer 3

Oh, man, some of the previous answers are painful.

The whiteness of clouds is due to the scattering of light from the sun.  Cloud droplets scatter sunlight more or less equally in all directions, and they scatter all of the colors visible light more or less equally well.  The result is that you see a mix of all of the colors (a.k.a. "white").

As for the grayness... If you are UNDER the cloud, it's just because not all of the light from the sun is making it to your eye--some of the light was reflected off the top of the cloud, some (small amount) of it was absorbed by cloud droplets inside the cloud, etc.  Gray areas on the SIDES of clouds are generally just shadows.

Answer 4

Clouds usually look gray when we are directly underneath them. This is because sunlight does not shine directly on the bottom of clouds, but rather shines through the tops of clouds.

Sunlight gets blocked more when the cloud is thicker. So the bottom of the cloud looks dark. If the cloud is thin, it may appear more white because there is less cloud matter to block sunlight.

If you are under a tall dark cloud, wait until it passes, and look at it's side. The side of the cloud will be illuminated by sunlight, and thus all white. So, the brightness of the cloud (white versus gray or black) has a lot to do with where you are standing and the thickness of the cloud.

Sunlight has to travel thousands of feet through the cloud to our eyes. As the light travels through the thick cloud it gets scattered, absorbed, and reflected away from our eyes. In the end, this means that less and less light reaches our eyes.

Color is light. The different wavelengths or parts of light are described as a color. When you see light white light, remember that it contains all colors of the rainbow.

So, Colors = Wavelengths = "Parts"

...at least for my purposes of explaining why clouds are white.

If all colors of the spectrum are present (Red, Orange, Yellow, Green, Blue, Indigo, Violet) then the color of light is white. If no light at all (not any of the colors above) are seen, then the color is called black.

White = all colors

Black = no colors

So, since clouds are white (typically) then clouds must reflect ALL colors of the rainbow, right?

You betcha. All wavelengths or "parts" of light are scattered equally when light hits clouds. This type of scattering is called Mie scattering, and is the reasoning behind clouds being white. If the light hitting clouds does not have all parts or wavelengths of light, then the clouds will scatter whatever colors. This is the case at sunset, when only the Red/Orange/Yellow wavelengths of light are hitting the clouds.