does anyone know ahy snow is white and ice is colorless?
81776
Snow is crystalized water and ice is frozen water.
226432
"So black and white" -- There are no degrees of black and white. Only black and only white. And, the speaker seems to see things as only one thing--either black or white.
76202
Ok, water, ice, and snow are the same things. They are the same element (depending if they are different mixtures. Are you pregnant? Ive only known pregnant people to like water ir anything frozen so much. But anyways, H2O whether ice or snow, are the same exact things.
413452
In the alpine regions of Colorado it is not uncommon to find pink snow falling in the mountains. What a surprise to open your door, walk outside and find the ground covered in snow cone. Looks good enough to eat I suppose, though I don’t think I would be the brave soul to try it. \n\nThe pink hue is caused by an algae called “chlamydomonas nivalis”. Locals call it “Watermelon Snow” because it actually has a taste very similar to watermelon. The snow (and the algae) is safe to eat, atleast in reasonable quantities. Some algae can be slightly toxic, and eating too much may result in pink diarrhea. \n\nIt is pretty unbelievable that snow would fall from the sky colored pink, and even more unbelievable that it would be safe to eat and taste like watermelon. An excerpt from a recent Wowozanga article explains some of the scientific reasoning behind this. \n\nThere are actually more than 350 kinds of algae that survive in very cold temperatures. These algae can turn the snow black, brown or yellow (just don’t confuse this with the OTHER yellow snow), too. “Chlamydomonas nivalis” tends to flourish when the weather warms up a little after the darkest, coldest part of winter. It starts out green, then turns pink or reddish as the weather brightens. The cells have a gelatinous sheath that protect them from the strong ultraviolet radiation at high altitudes (at 12,000 feet / 3,7 kilometers on the above photo), and this sheath is what produces the pink color. \n\nAnother pink snow incident recently appeared when certain parts of Russia’s Maritime territory were coated with pink snow. This follows a yellow snowfall last month caused by pollution or possibly volcanic activity. Meteorologists suggest that the pink tint comes from Mongolian sand. To quote Mos News: “Before it arrived in Maritime, the cyclone passed Mongolia, where sand storms had been raging in the desert. The winds of the cyclone embraced dust particles that colored the fallouts,” the experts said.
961074
snow isn't really white its just the amount of light that is bounced back so when it melt it changes states of matter and becomes a liquid which bounces back light differently
67967
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. \n\nSnow 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.
1099928
white...It's a polar bear
652845
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.
163899
essentially it is the same reason the sky is blue - rayleigh scattering inside the ice itself.  see the page below for details:\nhttp://www.gi.alaska.edu/ScienceForum/ASF7/773.html
270266
Lightning can be any color. It is reflected off things that are near it, so it could be any color.
503232
whitish/grayish. It's really just made up of rock. Then again its just a humongous rock that's in orbit with us.
188192
snow is a form of precipitation and ice is frozen precipitation.
61754
A beam of white sunlight entering a snow bank is so quickly scattered by a zillion ice crystals and air pockets that most of the light comes bouncing right back out of the snow bank. What little sunlight is absorbed by snow is absorbed equally over the wavelengths of visible light thus giving snow its white appearance.
1032082
Well, snow is frozen water, like ice cubes, which are sometimes white depending on how they freeze.\n\nWhat you see is white are actually snowflakes or snow crystals all piled up together.  They're white because of the way the sun reflects off of them.\n\nWhen they melt they return to water, which doesn't reflect the sun the same way, so you don't see any more white.
22280
Water and ice are transparent and light passes through without any portions of the visible spectrum being absorbed or reflected. On the other hand, most of the visible (white) light striking a snowy surface is reflected back by the countless tiny surfaces of the snow crystals giving snow its white appearance.\n\nOne can think of the ice or snow layer as a filter. If it is only about a centimeter thick, all the light makes it through and it is seen as white, but if it is a meter or more thick, mostly blue light makes it through. More red light is absorbed compared to blue. Not much more, but enough that over a considerable distance, say a meter or more, the light emerging from the snow layer tends to be made up of more blue than red light. Poking a hole in the snow and looking down into the hole you can see blue light or the blue color associated with the depths of crevasses in glaciers. In each case the blue light is the product of a relatively long travel path through the snow or ice.
1093491
ice is water frozen. you can see through water, so you can see through ice. snow, however, is made of ice crystals that lump together. all of the lumps put together gives off that white color, and makes snow.
702919
Neither, it's an urban myth\n\nThey have 4 main words for snow\n\nMany of the words claimed to mean snow are wrong .... for example, people say they have a word for the snow they use for igloos ....... this is rubbish, the word they use literally means "materials for house" nothing at all to do with snow.\n\nInterestingly though, they have no word for bear, you can say polar bear as one word, black bear as one word, but not just bear.\n\nFish is another example, they have words for trout, salmon etc but no word for fish as a whole.