Why is Snow White?

Have you ever played with white flakes of snow in winter? It is indeed lots of fun and if you have not enjoyed it till now, you will definitely want to enjoy it someday. Do you know why the snow appears white even though water is colorless? Why not ask the question in your physics tuition? Your physics tuition is always ready to answer your queries. Today in the physics tuition, we will find out why snow is white in color. We all know that snow is actually frozen water. It forms when water vapor in the atmosphere freezes. As the vapor freezes, clear, transparent crystals are formed. These crystals are thrown about in the atmosphere by the air currents. As they go up and down, they begin to gather more and more crystals. When a group of snow crystals becomes big enough, it floats down to earth as a snowflake.

Snowflakes have an infinite variety of shapes. They are usually hexagonal or can be shaped like a star or a needle. Surprisingly, no two snowflakes are exactly alike. When sunlight falls on these crystalline snowflakes it gets reflected from various faces of the crystals. Due to this reflection from many directions, snowflakes appear white.

The ice sold in the market, is prepared from large quantities of water. Hence it does not have any crystalline structure and the nature of reflection is very different. That is why it is colorless and appears transparent.

Mountain snow is an important source of water in rivers. Accumulated snow insulates the soil during the severe winter months. Freshly fallen snow reflects about 95% of the sun’s heat back into space. This is one of the reasons why the temperature often drops on winter nights. We hope you enjoyed this lesson from physics tuition. We will be back with more such interesting findings in our next physics tuition.

Never shy away from asking unusual questions. Never hesitate and feel that the question which is running in your mind is weird. Science is weird, and Science demands you to question it. Because that is the most effective yet exciting way to ace in Science. Science is wide and it has a lot of areas which may sound pretty daunting. If you aim to be an Engineer, Doctor, Pharmacist, Researcher, etc then you should definitely give a try to our amazing classes of A level physics tuition, O level physics tuition, JC physics tuition in Singapore.