Showing posts with label Snow. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Snow. Show all posts

Feb 6, 2015

Snow Driving Tip

Take out your floor mat, tuck it tightly in front of the spinning tires, and slowly drive forward. I used this back when I lived in the snow belt and it works.

Jan 16, 2015

Why Snow is White

Snowflakes are crystals of frozen water. Water and ice appear clear or slightly blue in large volumes. Snow is white, because of the way light interacts with snowflakes and the air molecules packed between each snowflake.

Water, ice, and an individual snowflake may appear transparent or clear, but water actually is translucent. The difference is that light can pass through a transparent material unchanged, while it is bent when passing through a translucent material. Light hits a snowflake and is bent and scattered across the spectrum by the facets and imperfections in each crystal.

Snowflakes scatter all frequencies of visible light, so the net effect is to produce white light, but deep layers of snow or compacted snow may appear blue. There is little air between crystals in compacted snow or ice, so there is less opportunity for light to be reflected. Thick layers absorb enough red light to cause this snow to appear blue. Snow also can appear blue if it has a layer of ice over it, which can reflect back the blue of the sky.

Ice is the word for the solid form of water, regardless of how or where it formed or how the water molecules are stacked together.

Snow is the word for precipitation that falls as frozen water. If the water forms crystals, you get snowflakes. Other types of snow include rime and graupel, which are ice, but not crystals. Bottom line, frost is ice, ice cubes are ice, and snow is a form of ice.

Jul 4, 2014

Ten Interesting Tidbits

The average child asks over four hundred questions each day. Makes it easy to understand why they learn so fast.
Of all the people in history that have reached age 65, half are still living.
The US is older than Germany. Germany became independent in 1871 and the US in 1776.
Two thirds of the people on earth have never seen snow.
A hummingbird weighs less than a US penny.
There are more empty houses in the US than homeless people.
The US FDA allows ten insects and thirty five fly eggs per eight ounces of raisins.
One in ten European babies were conceived on an IKEA bed.
A giraffe's tongue is twenty one inches long.
The Guinness Book of Records holds its own record as the book most stolen from public libraries.