why is ice colourless but snow is white?

Answer 1

Ice isn't colourless, if its in big blocks it looks white too. Ice cubes look clear cause they're only small volumes.

Answer 2

since snow is frozen water, and we all know that frozen water is clear, why does snow have a distinctive color? To understand this, we need to back up and look at an individual piece of ice. 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 is not the color we see in the individual ice crystals that form snow

Answer 3

things look colourless if light gets mostly transmitted through them.

things look white is light is reflected in all directions, at random.


in the case of an ice block / sheet, the surface reflects some light (which we see as a bright spot / broad line), but a lot of the light goes through it.

in the case of snow, each snowflake is make of ice. So each snowflake reflects a bit of light, and tansmits the rest. And then whatever goes through, gets reflected by the next snowflake. So in the end, most of the light gets reflected, and in all directions. Which is why snow appears white, even though it is made of lots of small ice structures.

hope this helps

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Answer 4

Snow looks white for the same reason clouds look white or a bowl of sugar looks white or a polar bear's fur looks white. All the individual elements in these things are transparent but they scatter the light falling on them. The white light from the sun is scattered by the substance so you see the cumulation of the objects as white.

Answer 5

snow isnt white at all it just appears like that, if you get a block of ice and shred it very quickly it comes to ground white as you say. Did you know a polar bear isnt white it has no colour at all, the hair that grows on it is transparent and are hollow and reflect the light so it appears white.

Answer 6

Snow has air within it and so comes out as white. Water is clear to the human eye but is actually blue if you get enough of it. (I was really surprised to hear that and it's nothing to do with the sea reflecting the sky). This is why glaciers have a blue tint to them.

Answer 7

Here is my very scientific answer:- ice is clear due to the air bubbles trapped inside and also because it is more compressed than snow. You also get blue ice when it is very very cold and all of the air has been squeezed out of it!!!!!

Answer 8

Ice is a frozen block of water. Snow is made up of tiny little frozen droplets, so when these little flecks are moulded together to make a snowdrop, it looks white. Youll see when one lands on your hand, it soon goes back to being a transparent droplet of water

Answer 9

Ice without air or any other impurities is clear and if made completely smooth will be easily seen through, snow and ice with impurities will be coloured and air makes it white

Answer 10

ice is not coler les the desolvd oxygen in the water makes it white to remove this boile the water to remove the oxygen to form clear ice so the reason snow is whight is becouse of desolvd oxygen in the water