What’s the difference between ice and snow? Aren’t they both frozen water?
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The main difference is that one is “fluffy” and the other is not. Snow contains a lot of finely distributed air inside. So there are a lot of small hollow chambers between (often needle like) tiny ice crystals.This is the reason for all its properties, i.e. snow:
– acts like a sponge for water; after some time the snow melts or the water freezes into the chambers.
– can be compressed, pushing some air out.
– is thus in general much softer, and lighter, than ice.
– insulates reasonably against heat loss, igloos can keep you alive quite well; like Styrofoam, but with frozen water instead of plastics.
– is white, as light is reflected and refracted around thousands of times whenever it enters/leaves a little chamber; the light therefore is not absorbed, hence no color or darkening, but also does not just pass straight through like with glass or pure ice.
And it can still keep its shape because all the icy branched needles (think of snowflakes, or 1/6th of them) are spiky enough to hook into each other, giving stability.
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