Have you ever asked yourself a question – why the water is blue? Obviously,we mean something large like sea or the ocean. If you take a glass of water, the liquid seems transparent and colorless, yet vast amounts of water possess certain colors. Let’s try to understand why it happens.
The color of the ocean is defined by the mechanism of absorption and dissipation of light by water molecules. Geoscientist Vasily V. Shuleikin described this complicated mechanism only in 1923. It turned out that water molecules move oscillatory, thus, they absorb waves of different length. Red wavelengths are predominantly absorbed, blue are less. Water molecules scatter blue wavelengths by absorbing the light waves and reemit those waves in different directions into the air, while red wavelengths are “swallowed” by the ocean. This makes ocean seem blue, and this is exactly why underwater photos are so full of blueness. (more…)