Why Is Snow White?

I've pondered this of late. My kids look at me and say, "Who cares?"

But how can a person get to be 50 without ever stopping to wonder how the cold stuff piled outside as far as the eye can see gets its white color? I mean snow is crystallized water and water is clear.

I've googled this and don't understand the answers. Can someone interpret this explanation from Discoveryonline. com to someone who lost a lot of brain cells raising seven kids?

"Photons, or light particles, come in a rainbow of colors. When photons encounter an object (a mirror, a black dog, an apple), they may have various reactions: They may bounce back (reflect). They may bounce sideways (scatter). They may pass right through (transmission). Or they may assault a molecule in the object, give up their energy and die (absorption).

Individual wavelengths, or shades of color, may react differently to the same object: An apple looks red because most of the colors in the light spectrum are absorbed by the apple. (Kudos to those who are still reading. Are your eyes glazing over yet?)

That said, why is snow white? The answer lies in snow's messy construction. A beam of white sunlight entering a snow bank is so quickly scattered by a zillion ice crystals and air pockets that most of it comes zinging right back out of the snow bank. No one wavelength is preferentially absorbed or reflected, so snow is essentially the color of the sunlight reflecting off it -- white."

Crystal clear isn't it? Or is it just me?

Oh well. Even if I don't understand why snow is white, I know the girls enjoy skiing on it.


And the girls lost to the boys in a snowball fight after church on Sunday.

And the snow ice cream the girls made this week tasted great.

And it was white. Very white.