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
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.
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