Showing posts with label white. Show all posts
Showing posts with label white. Show all posts

Sunday, June 12, 2016

What is the skin colour of Polar Bear?

Polar bears' fur consists of a dense, insulating underfur topped by guard hairs of various lengths. It is not actually white — it just looks like white. Each hair shaft is pigment-free, transparent with a hollow core that scatters and reflects visible light, much like what happens with ice and snow. Polar bears look whitest when they are clean and in high angle sunlight, especially just after the they shed old hair or skin to make way for a new growth, which usually begins in spring and is complete by late summer. Before shedding their old hair or skin, accumulated oils in their fur from the seals they eat can make them look yellow.

Sunday, May 12, 2013

Why does water appear white when it falls from height?

Aharbal Water Fall

Water falling from a height appears white is due to a phenomenon called non-selective scattering.
When water falls from a height with high velocity, lot of tiny water droplets are formed around the falling mass of water due to the bombardment of water with the rocks. These tiny droplets are about 100-1000 times bigger in size when compared with the wavelength of visible light which human eyes can see.
The light coming from the sun which the humans can see has three primary colours red, green and blue. When light rays confront the water droplets, they scatter the entire visible range. When these three primary colours red, green and blue are mixed in equal proportions, and produce white colour due to scattering of light. Hence, the colour we see after scattering by the water droplets is white.
When water falls with a low velocity, very less or even no such tiny droplets are formed around the water falling from height, hence no scattering takes place and we do not see white falling water.