Eli5: If water is transparent, why are clouds white?
In: 2742
Saran wrap is transparent.
Now crumple a bunch of it up into a ball.
It will now look white.
A saran wrap ball, much like a cloud, has a lot of surfaces in it.
It’s not just a solid ball: it’s got tiny (sometimes microscopic) pockets of air.
Light goes through it, comes back out, has to go through it again, come back out again.
That makes it much less transparent than if it were just a solid mass.
Similarly, with clouds, they’re not just solid water.
They’re tiny little droplets of water with air gaps between them, so light has many surfaces to pass through.
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