Eli5 why is snow white?

Question

So why is snow the color white and not clear? Is it because of the way it freezes?

In: 26

Answer 1

Its white because there is lots of it.

A single snowflake is pretty transparent but lets say it reflects about 5% of the light(and since it reflects all light equally it reflects white light)

Now there is thousands of snowflakes and if each one reflects 5% it starts to add up quickly so lets say by the time you have 50 snowflakes stacked they would reflect over 90% of the light.

Also because the snowflakes how very intricate and diverse shape- they disperse the light in all different direction which is why the light reflected is white – and not a mirror.