Eli5: If water is transparent, why are clouds white?
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Nothing is truly “transparent”, but more properly translucent.
In other words: some but not all light passes through water.
Besides clouds, you can see large bodies of water block light. You don’t have to go very far underwater before it gets really dark!
In the case of clouds, they’re white not because they’re blocking light, but because they’re diffusing and dispersing it. Think frosted glass.
Each time you get an interface between materials like water and air or glass and air, you’ve got a place where light will bend. The drops of water in a cloud are each bending the light and scattering it, which adds up to something bright (they’re kinda white) but that also obscures your view.
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