why is the snow white and the water doesn't have any color ?

Answer 1

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.

Here are some interesting links:

How Light Works
How Christmas Works
What is the difference between snow, sleet and freezing rain?
How much ice would I have to store up in the winter if I wanted to air condition my house all summer?

The Skinny on the Color of Snow
Questions and Answers About Snow
National Snow and Ice Data Center

Answer 2

I think a shorter answer would be because the molecules have not joned together yet when it is in liquid form. You can have clear ice. The "fog" is caused by impurities in the water. Union Ice Company makes 300 lb block of ice that are crystal clear just for ice sculptures. They get it that way by not allowing the impurities to settle in the ice...they keep the water flowing as it freezes and siphon out the remaining few inches before it all freezes. I saw it on the discovery channel.

Answer 3

water is a pure substance, and since water is made of two invisible gases, that's why water is clear, and snow becomes white.