Why is snow white and earth black. Interesting Snow Facts for Kids

When examining a single snowflake closely, you can see that it is transparent. But snow, which consists of thousands and thousands of transparent snowflakes, is white. How does it work?

This is because light has different wavelengths. Each wavelength has its own color. The distribution of colors by wavelength can be seen in the picture below.

Some materials can absorb waves of a certain wave, while others reflect them. That is why objects have different colors. For example, some materials reflect short waves of blue color, and longer wavelengths are absorbed, so we see a blue object. Other materials are red because they only reflect the wavelength characteristic of red. A material that reflects all waves incident on it will appear white, while a material that absorbs all waves will appear black.

Snow, as you know, is frozen water. If you look at the water, you can see that it is transparent, which means that light waves pass through it. Therefore, it is not surprising that the snowflake is also transparent. If you pass a beam of light through one snowflake, it will not be reflected, but, having passed through the smallest ice crystals, it will be refracted at an angle. No wonder they say: "there are no two identical snowflakes“, because they all have a diverse and unique shape. When a beam hits another snowflake, it will again be refracted at some angle, then another and another and so on until it hits our retina, and our brain interprets the information received as white.

Freshly fallen snow that does not contain impurities refracts light waves until they are reflected back, which is why it appears completely white. But sometimes even on pure snow you can notice some bluish tint. In this case, everything depends on the density of the fallen snow (if we exclude the presence of impurities). If it is loose enough, then long light waves penetrate it a little deeper, while short, predominantly blue, remain on the surface. We just observe them.

Illustration: depositphotos.com

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When a Russian person is asked to imagine winter, the first thing he sees in his imagination is snow, a snow-white cover that has enveloped everything around. We are so used to the color of snow that we don’t even think about why snow white color.

Why is snow white

All the colors we perceive are dependent on the rays of the sun. Black items completely absorb sunlight, and therefore are perceived by us as black. And if the object completely reflects a ray of the sun, then the color will appear white to us.

What is snow, exactly? This is frozen water, hexagonal pieces of ice. Water and ice are colorless. Why is snow white then? The ice remains colorless, as it passes the entire sunbeam through itself. And each snowflake would pass all the light through itself and would also have no color. But snowflakes usually fall on top of each other in erratic motion. And already together they become opaque, but white.

To understand why snow is white, why it reflects the rays of the sun, we need to look at the composition of snow. Snow is formed from snowflakes, and snowflakes are formed from a huge number of crystals. These crystals are not smooth, but with edges. This is the answer to our question why snow is white. It is from the edges that sunlight is reflected.

The water in the atmosphere is steam, it freezes and transparent crystals form. From the movement of air, the crystals move freely up and down. In this chaotic movement, the crystals are connected to each other. And when at last too many crystals gather together, then they begin to fall to the ground already in the form of snowflakes familiar to us.

It turns out that the color of snow is white, because the light of the sun that it reflects is also white. Think if a ray of the sun turned green or yellow, then the color of the snow would be the same. Surely, many have noticed that during sunrise or sunset, it seems to us that the rays of the sun become pinkish, so the snow at this moment seems pink to us.

Is there a different color of snow

Who can give an affirmative answer to this absurd question?! Don't dismiss this idea right away. In fact, it also happened that colored snow fell. For example, once Charles Darwin described one such case. It happened during one of his expeditions. Looking at the hooves of the mules, C. Darwin saw that they were covered with red spots. It happened when the mules walked through the fallen snow. It turned out that the red snow was formed from the presence of red pollen in the air at the time when the snow began to fall.

Snow. This is seasonal, when cold fetters the earth and frozen water crystals fall out in the form of individual snowflakes. And everything is wrapped in a white carpet.

Involuntarily, the question arises, why exactly white. After all, as you know, water is distinguished by its transparency and ice, in principle, should also be so. The explanation for this is quite simple.

White snow

They say that each one is unique. There are no two similar beauties of winter. And indeed it is. They consist of frozen water, but frozen for a reason. In the composition of snowflakes great amount tiny ice crystals. And they are not at all smooth, as one might imagine, but have numerous facets. And then normal sunlight kicks in. It cannot pass through the snowflake, but is constantly reflected from the edges, which makes the snow white. There is a certain optical effect, thanks to which we know the expression "white winter".

If you look closely, you can distinguish dozens of shades of "white" snow.

The smallest water crystals themselves are simply frozen water vapor that is contained in clouds. If you climb high into the mountains, you can find yourself in a damp fog. This is the same cloud from which, when cooled, they are obtained. Small crystals obey air currents moving up and down. In the course of such a movement, they collide with other crystals, join together and form the very snowflakes that have already reached their final destination - the earth.

The shape of the crystals can be different, but most often it is either a six-pointed star or a hexagonal plate. Surprisingly, each such face exactly repeats the neighboring ones. This is how the well-known white snow is formed.

colorful snow

Contrary to popular belief, snow is not only white. There have been cases of colored precipitation. This is very famous cases, one of which was described by Charles Darwin himself. During one of his scientific travels, he noticed that red spots appeared on the hooves of pack animals, but it was not blood. In the course of the study, it turned out that it was just pollen. local plant, which settled on the freshly fallen snow.

Snow can be of all colors of the rainbow, usually the result of chance or human influence.

Other factors can also influence the change in snow color. For example, the location in a snowy area of a large chemical plant or enterprise. So sulfur emissions can give the yellow color of the snow, and manganese - red. Residents of industrial regions know this effect and have not been surprised by the multicolored snow for a long time.

Where does snow come from?

In winter, snow falls from the sky in the form of ice crystals.

Water vapor travels from the ground to the atmosphere, forming clouds. Clouds form throughout the year, regardless of temperature.

Snow is water vapor that freezes into ice crystals in the atmosphere. Sometimes it happens that as many as 200 tiny ice crystals form one snowflake, put together, they form snow.

Why does it snow in winter?

When there is a minimum amount of moisture in the air, and the air temperature drops below freezing (0 degrees Celsius or 32 degrees Fahrenheit) and the ground temperature is steadily below zero, of course, snow falls on the ground: not heavy water drops of rain, but light white snow snow will reach the ground.

Why is snow white?

Snow is virtually colorless. Visible sunlight is white. Most natural materials absorb some spectrum of sunlight, which gives them their color. Because of the absorbency. every thing has its own color. However, the snow reflects most sunlight. The complex structure of snow crystals results in countless tiny surfaces that effectively reflect visible light. Little sunlight is absorbed by the snow (and is absorbed evenly over wavelengths visible light), thereby giving the snow its white color.

What shape are snowflake crystals?

Snow comes in different crystalline forms. Often snowflakes are depicted as stellar dentites. However, the snow is various forms: these can be simple prisms, simple triangles, hollow columns, or fern-like twigs-crystals. The shape of a snow crystal is often too small to see with the naked eye. Researchers use snowflake photomicroscope to document different forms and types of snowflakes.
The first person to successfully photograph snowflakes was farmer Wilson Bentley from Vermont (USA). They called him Snowflake Bentley. After several years of experimenting with connecting microscopes to a bellows chamber, in 1885 Wilson Bentley managed to capture the first photograph of a snowflake. In total, he photographed more than 5,000 precious snowflakes.

Children always look forward to winter. Making a snowman, sledding and jumping into snowdrifts is interesting and enjoyable! After active games fresh air, they often find inspiration, and questions begin: “Why is the sun yellow and snow white”? Few people explain the reasons for these phenomena to the little “why”s. Let's answer at least one of the above questions. So why is snow white?

A short excursion into physics

The earth is surrounded electromagnetic waves. They are everywhere, but mostly invisible to living beings. What the eye perceives is considered a color - electromagnetic radiation, a wave that gives a color sensation. The main source of electromagnetic waves is the Sun. Its rays include all primary colors:

red;
yellow;
blue;
blue;
green;
Orange;
violet.

If all the colors merge together, a white tint is formed, and the sun's rays are just white.

Every object on Earth transmits (reflects, absorbs) sunlight. There are those who fully display it, such as ice. Each individual snowflake is the same ice.

Interesting Facts about snow:

Half of the inhabitants the globe I have never seen real snow, only in pictures.
In 1949, in the Sahara for the first and last time snow. The snowfall continued for more than half an hour.

snow and color

Snowflakes fall on the ground randomly, and as a result, the snowball does not transmit fully electromagnetic waves (sunlight). Therefore, if at sunny weather make a dent in the snowdrift, the snow seems green-yellow. When overcast, it looks blue. If there is a bright red sunset in the sky - pink. The surface of the snowdrift displays all the colors of the rainbow when it is clear and sunny outside.

In latitudes that are closer to the Earth's poles, the snow appears to be a rich red color. Scientists often note a similar phenomenon in the Arctic. In the United States, namely the state of California, in 1955, residents observed a green snowfall. In 1969, a black snowfall hit Switzerland. In Russia, yellow snow fell in 2015, which was written about for a long time in the media. air masses brought with them African sand dust, which painted precipitation in an unusual color for them.

Interesting Snow Facts:

There are no two identical snowflakes, each has its own separate pattern. Physicists claim that there are more such patterns than there are atoms on Earth.
World Snow Day is celebrated annually on January 19th.

The great Charles Darwin made a note in his diary about the fact that snow comes in different colors. It is known that once the writer went on a trip, and noticed that the horses left red tracks in the snowdrifts. It was a bright sunset, so the snow seemed not white, but pink.
The concept of color is generally subjective. One sees grass as green, another sees light green, and the third sees turquoise. These phenomena are not yet fully understood.

So the answer to main question: Why is snow white? It reflects the sun's rays, which, as already mentioned, are white. But it's worth intervening somehow weather phenomena- clouds, a bright sunset, and these atmospheric precipitation will no longer seem to be of such a shade.

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