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By BRIDGE8 under license from Mangorolla CIC 2024
Great question!
Ice is actually not 100% clear – not as clear as glass anyway. That’s because ice is made up of water molecules that are really close to each other and when the light goes through it, the waves of the light get bent a little bit, and some of them get reflected off the molecules and out again.
Snow is actually made up of lots and lots of tiny ice crystals (snow flakes). When the light goes through these crystals, it gets bent a little bit (diffracted). Because there are so many crystals packed in together, it gets bent many many times and eventually gets reflected back out – giving it the appearance of being opaque, or white!
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You first need to ask yourself what makes something look clear rather than white.
Basically, something looks clear if you can see an image (picture) THROUGH it. So something looks clear if light goes through it in a “neat” way, and looks not clear if light goes through it in a “messy” way (because that destroys the picture).
And Kate has explained why snow messes up light more than ice.
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