The Color of Water

[alohacyberian]

What color is pure water?

You might think that absolutely pure water would be perfectly
clear and utterly transparent, but it's actually blue. The blue
color of the water in the oceans (and not the blue of the sky) is
the reason why Earth is mostly blue as seen from space.

Pure water absorbs some of the light that passes through it. It
absorbs red light more than yellow, yellow more than green, and
green more than blue. Only the deepest blue light can travel
very far through water, so a large mass of water takes on a deep
blue color.

The blueness of water is easily visible in a swimming pool lined
with white concrete. It's even visible in a white porcelain
bathtub. But the bluest water of all is the clear tropical ocean
far from land, where the sea is much bluer than the sky.

The color of the ocean is strongly affected by plankton and
impurities:
http://daac.gsfc.nasa.gov/CAMPAIGN_DOCS/OCDST/what_is_ocean_color.
html
http://www.oceansonline.com/rainbows.htm

-- The Learning Kingdom

For more links to NASA - you are invited to visit the Science
Page at my website: http://keith.martin.home.att.net/space.html
- KM
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