I’m watching a show and they are in BC in the mountains. The water they’re fishing in is that beautiful, clear, turquoise water you see mainly in photos of vacation destinations. My question is why is some water so beautiful, clean-looking, and bright turquoise while others (like the lakes we swim in where I live) are dark and almost dirty-looking? I could take a cup of water from the lake and look at it in a clear glass, and, for the most part, it’s totally clear. So why is it that some bodies of water look beautiful and turquoise, and others look dark?
In: Earth Science
The soil!
You know how charcoal and sand act as water filters? Basically, the soil around the water plays a large part. This is why lots of northern lakes are very clear, most of the soil is sand and other debris. As the lake water filters in and out of the soil, it leaves behind many of the contaminants that make the water appear murky. This is exactly the reason why Michigan’s lakes are known to be so clear, usually.
Your local lakes are probably near relatively “muddy” soil where the composition has much less sand. This means that the water is keeping many of the contaminants and the water appears more brown and murky. But, you only really see these impurities when you have a large body of water as they need to absorb the light passing through them and light can penetrate pretty far in even murky water.
I can think of at least two reasons, there are probably others. For a start, even if the water looks transparent when you’re looking through a few inches of it in a glass, it won’t necessarily do so when you’re looking through the entire depth of the lake, so impurities in the water will totally affect its colour. Secondly, there’s also whatever is at the bottom of the lake–unless the water is very deep indeed you’ll be able to see some distorted image of the lake bottom through the water, and the colour and material of that will affect how the water appears from the top.
Latest Answers