Re: The blueness of water

[Larry Woolf <Larry.Woolf@GAT.COM>]

At 3:54 PM -0700 4/28/2002, William Beaty wrote:
> And regarding salt water: sea salt is white.  In so many words I'm
> wondering if adding sea salt to a deep pool of fresh water would
> significantly affect the color we see.

For a deep pool of water where the bottom was not a factor in reflecting
the incident light:
Since the sea salt would either be a diffuse reflector or a scattering
center, it would reduce the path length of the light in the water before it
was multiply scattered or reflected back to you eye, leading to a less blue
color of the water.



> Weird swimming-pool effect:  some relatives in San Jose have an outdoor
> inground pool with black walls.  It's very hard to see the surfaces, and
> unless the sun is casting shadows, the depth of the pool looks scary.
> Stare down into it and imagine gigantic finned torpedo shapes gliding
> around in the depths.   Yeesh.

Since most of the light that we see from a pool of water is reflected off
of the bottom or sides, painting the bottom and sides black leads to a
black poo of water.  I agree - they are eerie.  Morale: do not paint pool
sides/bottom dark colors.


Dr. Lawrence D. Woolf; General Atomics, 3550 General Atomics Court, Mail
Stop 15-242, San Diego, CA 92121