Re: The blueness of water

[Bernard Cleyet <anngeorg@PACBELL.NET>]

Apropos -- of intrinsic color by absorption.

Look through a sheet of glass through the longest dimension.

bc


Larry Woolf wrote:

> At 12:13 AM -0700 4/28/2002, William Beaty wrote:
> > Heh.  What's your evidence that the mineral impurities in ocean water are
> > colorless?  The water is full of dissolved salts.  Just to clarify, we're
> > arguing whether their color effects as viewed through a few meters of
> > ocean water is significantly smaller or larger than the color effects
> > caused by the water itself.
>
> Since water - fresh or salt - generally appears colorless for shallow
> depths, blue-green for a couple of meters depth, and blue for more than a
> few meters, I would argue that dissolved salts are not a major effect.  The
> salts most likely lead to increased scattering of incident light, which
> would affect the path length of light in water before it enters your eye.
> Certainly if there is a high concentration of colored matter or

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