Eli5: If water is transparent, why are clouds white?
In: 2742
In a word- diffraction.
Basically, when lots of surfaces and angles are introduced to ray-paths of light (which implies there are different materials for the light to traverse – with the important distinction being changes in those materials’ densities), the light ‘bounces’ around instead of traveling in a straight line. Enough chaotic, criss-crossing light rays creates opaqueness – in the case of liquid water, light sees it as a single continuous material of constant density and the ray-paths pass linearly through (so that looks clear to us). In the case of clouds, which are millions droplets, the light see it as millions of discrete objects (which it physically is) and refracts each time passing through the curves droplet surfaces, redirecting the ray-path in an amount proportional to the angle relative to the surface interface & difference in material densities (this is known as Snell’s Law) – and we can’t see through the chaos.
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