The colour of water

[ForcedAllegiance]

Even if Stephen Fry told me David Hasselhoff was in fact secretly the real U.S. president, i'd probably still believe him. he is all-knowing

[Leowen2]

If I'm drowning that'll be good to know.

[haz464]

nothing is truly colourless except for a black hole

[SonOfFurzehatt]

@haz464 And Rick Perry's ideal of America.

[buffaloface1]

if people have been watching frozen planet (which i strongley advise) then youd see that the ice is often blue. nontheless i dont think water is blue i think its just that blue has a shorter wavelength than red so gets refracted moreso the blue comes out more than the red or smething like that

[hejcoze]

Nonsense. Water is blue, because my mother said so.

(But more seriously. I want to see the spectroscopy results! And are we talking about solid, liquid or gaseous water?)

[Dragon2802]

I knew it was blue :D no one believes me

[jimbobcatfish]

I just though it looks blue because of the way light refracts into it, showing the blue end of the spectrum.

[GuacamoleKun]

@jimbobcatfish Well yes, but that is how all colors work. Every material reflects only a certain bit of the spectrum back at you. A white material is a material that reflects the whole spectrum.

[jimbobcatfish]

@GuacamoleKun Yeah i know it reflects colours, but i though it was transparent and when light hits it, it refracts showing the blue end. But i guess if it did that it should show all of the spectrum

[brockheinz]

if it had no lolour you wouldn't be able to see it, i.e oxygen.

[Daleksaresupreme1]

@brockheinz well it would still bend light so you would see it

[GuacamoleKun]

@brockheinz That's not true. You don't see water because of its color, you see it because of the disruption on the surface of the barrier between it and the air. (And because the barrier is shiny.) What you see is only the barrier. Go underwater and you can see through it almost as clearly as air (aside from floating particles) with no distortion, but look up and you clearly see the barrier just as you can from above.

[Akaitsuki85]

maybe the sky is blue because it's reflecting the water? Oooo entering the twilight zone :3

[JJJMMM1]

@Akaitsuki85

Nope. The sky is blue even if you're at the continental pole of inaccessibility. If you're interested in the reason why it is blue, just google "why is the sky blue" and check the first page that comes up.

[wubs23]

@Akaitsuki85 hahah very good comment xD

[nikoincroatia]

Are you fucking kidding me... why was I always told it was clear when I said blue

[ConsciousAtoms]

@nikoincroatia It's only slightly blue. If you fill a long tube with water and shine white light trough it from one end, it will appear light blue when seen from the other end. The reason the ocean seems blue is because it reflects the sky. You may find it quite interesting that heavy water (D2O, deuterium oxide) IS clear.

[nikoincroatia]

@ConsciousAtoms Okay. Still, slightly blue is still blue.

[jayjjj3]

Oxygen (O2) is blue as well.

[fiver1niner]

another reason the water is bluer in the sea is because it is below the sky which is blue due to ozone a form of poisonous gas that is the color blue.

[SanjarTheKingOfKings]

@fiver1niner As opposed to water in lakes and streams because that is not below sky at all.

[fiver1niner]

@SanjarTheKingOfKings no those are filled with dirt and plants and they dont hold a body large enough to reflect the sky

[SanjarTheKingOfKings]

@fiver1niner As opposed to the ocean, which holds no plantlife or rests on top of soil at all.

[Sakkura1]

@fiver1niner The sky is not blue due to ozone. It is blue due to Rayleigh scattering.

[Mia646]

@fiver1niner The sky's blue due to oxygen. Back when the atmosphere was made up of CO2 and the like it was a redish-brown I think

[fiver1niner]

@Mia646 oxygen is clear

[Meehuuu]

@Mia646 That's because CO2 and O2 scatter light at different angles.

[kaderoder]

WATER IS NOT BLUE. As a matter of fact, nothing has any color at all. What we perceive as color is only the color spectrum that is absorbed the least- and reflected the most from the object. Anything that 'looks' blue is because it is reflecting blue spectrum the most while absorbing it the least. A green apple is just reflecting the green spectrum more, its NOT green! Most of you will hate my absolutely accurate comment. Trololololol!!

[mrmootheirrev]

@kaderoder Why would I hate what has been accepted scientific fact for centuries?

[fiver1niner]

@kaderoder except that what we perceive is true. time did not exist until we started counting time. colors did not exist until we named them ect.

[jackamatyus]

@fiver1niner Time and colours did exist before we named them...if time and colours didn't exist before we named them, how would anything evolve up until the point in which we could name them. That's like saying once you die the world stops existing, and before you were born the world never existed. It makes no sense.

[Nibor7301]

@jackamatyus I don't know about time, but colour didn't exist before life, at least. However, you're right that something had to exist before for us to evolve to the point of being able to perceive colour. But it was light/photons, not colour. It's really a question of semantics. Colour isn't actually anything physical. It's what we perceive when light hits our eyes. The hue varies according to the light's frequencies.

Time's a bit more complicated, as no one really understands it yet.

[jackamatyus]

@Nibor7301 By life, do you mean human life or all life? The argument is that colour and time existed before we named them and identified them as existing. Colour is how we percieve light, yes. But we're not alone in such an ability, there is no doubt that other organisms have the ability to do the same. Indeed, we named colours, but they still existed and they were being used and seen by other organisms long before we started seeing them, let alone before we started naming them.

[Nibor7301]

@jackamatyus Oh, you're right about the naming thing. I do agree that other life probably also perceives colour, and we did before we developed language. That's why I said before life. Before life there definitely wasn't such a thing as colour. First life forms, of course, couldn't perceive it either, as they had no eyes. But eventually, some life form was the first.

[Erufailon42]

@Nibor7301 Using your logic, one could say that nothing existed before life, as nothing was there to sense it. Before that, it was just... stuff. I do get your point though, it's just I don't like semantics

[Nibor7301]

@Erufailon42 Hehe! It's the tree falling in the forest problem!

[Erufailon42]

@Nibor7301 Oh, right. I didn't even notice :P

[Android18uk]

@Nibor7301 You're right, colour is interpreted by our brains from the wavelengths that are reflected from the object.

[SanjarTheKingOfKings]

@kaderoder When something reflects heavily on the green spectrum, we call it green. That reflection we percieve is called color.

[kaderoder]

@SanjarTheKingOfKings Yeah, thats right.

[Caconymic]

I love Alan's face at the end when his mind is just shattered :D

[Letspreach]

@irondonkeyuk Genius.

[shzze]

i allways thought/was told it was blue becouse it was the sky reflecting on the waters surface oh well its not like i personnaly need to know the right answer

[PrezLeefun]

Poor Alan...it is as if he says the wrong thing just to get it out of the way for possible right answers.

[temporaldisplacement]

@lordnimr0d When you look at the sea; the blue colour that you see is light from the sun, going through the surface of the water, loosing red, then yellow and lastly green ...then that light is bouncing off the mass' of particles floating at various depths and from there to your eye.

People say there is no light at the bottom of the ocean ...thats not true, there are pleanty of photons but the prismatic effect of water has stripped the visable spectrum from the light.

[temporaldisplacement]

@lordnimr0d "I pity the fool."

[temporaldisplacement]

@lordnimr0d Dude; you want to live in ignorance do so; but stop spreading your BS when you cant be bothered to do any research of your own.

[leckerwurstbrot]

@temporaldisplacement

..and if you prefer to believe everything your diving instructor says instead of opening a physics book, go ahead. Just don't assume the rest of us are equally lazy.

Water is blue: while the light travels through it, wavelengths are absorbed and scattered, letting the lighter blue ones through to be received by the observer. Exactly what your PADI buddies explain - what they and you don't seem to know is that that is the very definition of "colour".

[temporaldisplacement]

@leckerwurstbrot "wavelengths are ABSORBED and scattered" If water was blue then light coming back to you from the sun via the surface of your hands when they hold water would be blue; if only slightly ...however the spectrum is broken up starting at red ..hence water has a cooler resting temperature than air in the same enviroment. Take a colour chart down on a dive and watch the colours vanish as you go beyond each colours respective maximum deapth. Its only blue light goes WAY further down.

[leckerwurstbrot]

@temporaldisplacement

And why, do you think, is it that blue light "goes way further down", as you put it?

[temporaldisplacement]

@leckerwurstbrot Because blue light's wavelength has different properties to other colours.

[leckerwurstbrot]

@temporaldisplacement

Not technically wrong, though a bit redundant. If it had the same properties as other colours, it wouldn't be a different colour...

Now explain to me why you think blue gatorade is blue. Or most ink. Or the socks I'm wearing.

[temporaldisplacement]

@leckerwurstbrot Because they exclusivly reflect blue, water doesn't reflect anything, it refracts.

[leckerwurstbrot]

@temporaldisplacement

If water doesn't reflect anything, how are we able to see it from the outside?

Does the light that reach our eyes then actually come from the second, blue sun at the bottom of the ocean that only divers know about?

[temporaldisplacement]

@leckerwurstbrot Dude, no need to make asinine remarks because you don't understand. Either take a level-3-4-5 physics course .....or stop trolling.

[leckerwurstbrot]

@temporaldisplacement

I take it that means you don't know the answer to that, then.

I've said this before: If you're content with your ignorance and learning resistance, I'm happy for you. But, please, stop spreading your utterly uninformed bullshit in places where impressionable young minds could read and believe it.

[temporaldisplacement]

@leckerwurstbrot bye crazy dude.

[temporaldisplacement]

@lordnimr0d There is red and yellow and green as well; but not for long as they filter out, have you ever noticed in birds-eye-view photo's of sandy beaches that you can see the sand as a perfectly normal sandy colour which quickly fades out into the blue. Well thats because the water is colourless, if the water was blue then it would be blue all the way up to the farthest outreach of the waves. When you pick up water out of the sea with your hands, do your hands look blue? No is the answer.

[temporaldisplacement]

@lordnimr0d Sorry man, but you obviously dont hold a PADI certificate. Or know too much about physics. I've had lengthy conversations with submariners about light refraction; I know what I'm talking about.

[eetjaarem]

Are people seriously arguing wether water is blue of not? For fuck sake, who cares?

[temporaldisplacement]

FOR CRYING OUT LOUD!! you all AND mr.fry are WRONG: water is blue because light passing through it is filtered out starting at red and moving to blue, it is simply that blue has the greatest prenetration of water ....and both mr.davis and mr.fry have gone diving, and thus OUGHT to have been trained by P.A.D.I. (proffesional association of diving instructors) dive-masters who MUST teach this.

[Redheadfury]

@temporaldisplacement haha COlour is to do with what light reflects off things to determine EVERYTHINGs colour, all you've done is explain why it is blue - so it's not blue because it's blue right? Tard.

[youreinatimemachine]

the sky is blue, because of sunlight refraction through WATER droplets in the sky

[omega4104]

No, it's because the atmosphere is mostly nitrogen, and nitrogen reflects blue light

[QuixoticTendencies]

@omega4104 If it was a matter of reflection, you would only be able to see the sky from above it.

[ShasaiaToriia]

@QuixoticTendencies That is not at all how science works.

[QuixoticTendencies]

@ShasaiaToriia What does what I said have to do with the scientific method?

[javonpryce]

The main reason the ocean is blue is because water itself is a blue-colored chemical. Optical scattering from water molecules provides a second source of the blue color, but colored light caused by scattering only becomes significant with extremely pure water. According to the frequency spectra for pure liquid water, a short water column has a very light shade of turquoise blue. Thicker layers appear much darker blue. Only when collected in a large body, water's blue color becomes apparent.