why are clouds white?

Answer 1

Clouds are white because they reflect sunlight. When flying above clouds during the day, they are always bright white. When we get dark clouds, they are so thick that they soak up most of the sunlight or reflect it upwards, and so things aren't as bright below. Storm clouds are the thickest clouds, and look the darkest from below, though they look bright white from above.

Answer 2

Clouds usually look grey when we are directly underneath them. This is because the sun shines through the tops of clouds. Therefore, the colour of the cloud is determined by the thickness of the cloud.

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

If you see a really 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 / colour of the cloud 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.

As you may know, white is made up of all the colours of the rainbow. All these colours 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.

Sometimes, due to the way the light hits the clouds, it doesn't spread all the colours, then the clouds will scatter whatever colors remain, usually making the clouds red / orange / yellow.

Answer 3

white light from the sun consists of all the colors of the rainbow. Since light travels as waves of different lengths, each color has its very own unique wavelength.

In much the same way as why skies are blue, clouds are white because their water droplets or ice crystals are large enough to scatter the light of the seven wavelengths (red, orange, yellow, green, blue, indigo, and violet), which combine to produce white light. Clouds will appear dark or gray when either they are in another clouds shadow or the top of a cloud casts a shadow upon its own base.

The darkness of a cloud also depends on the background sky. A cloud will look darker when it is surrounded by a bright sky and lighter when it is in front of darker ones. Not always will a dark cloud mean rain.

More often, the reason we experience dark rainy days is because clouds are blocking the sunlight. Some of the whitest, most pure light can be observed when dark clouds "break apart" and sunlight filters through.

Answer 4

Why are clouds white, you say? Clouds are white because the rain and sleet inside of the clouds scatters all sunlight equally creating white light. The same is true for White Cloud toilet tissue. White light bounces off of the fibers of the tissue, which scatters light equally and absorbs next to none.

Answer 5

SEATTLE - First of all, you have to remember that white light is made up of the 7 colors of the rainbow -- red, orange yellow green, blue, indigo, and violet (Just remember ROY G. BIV).

In the meantime, clouds are collections of tiny water droplets and ice crystals. Each of those droplets and crystals will reflect each color of light equally, combining to make them appear white.

As for what causes our familiar gray clouds around the Northwest? That's caused by higher clouds casting their shadow on lower-based clouds, or that the clouds are so dense that their top parts absorb most of the sunlight, casting their own shadow along their base, making them dark on the bottom (the part you see.)

Answer 6

Clouds actually is formed out of the water vapors that evaporated in the sky. Our naked eye can view it from afar as a white clouds because of the light from the sun is a factor too.

Answer 7

Clouds are white because they consist of water vapor, which against the blue sky looks even whiter than it is.
Sometimes they are overloaded with water vapor and then they are gray rain clouds.

Answer 8

They are not white !!! They range from white to black (grayscale)
They are just colorless vapors of water .... their color (we watch) depends upon many factors:
the position of the Sun
the density of the clouds
the wind
the component of the clouds --- vapors, drops, snow, etc.

Answer 9

Because Ice appears white.

Answer 10

because it looks pretty against the blue sky