SNOWPURE LIGHT

Dominion, Volume 28, Issue 86, 5 January 1935, Page 17

SNOWPURE LIGHT

Have you ever wondered why show is such a dazzling white? If you look out of your window early in the morning, those of you who are lucky enough to live where the snow comes, before it has been disturbed, it shines back from ground and roof, and every twig and branch and wall, so brightly that you can hardly bear to go on looking. It is a wonderful sight, though, and the fact is that it is absolutely pure light. It strikes us as marvellous because we very rarely see pure light, for the simple reason there are very few reflectors so good as snow. It is made up of millions and millions of tiny crystals, and from every surface, or facet, of these crystals the light shines back in unbroken white beams and gives you an impression of dazzling white. If it were broken it would be split up into the seven colours of the rainbow that make up the whiteness of light. But the snow cystals reflect it back quite unbroken —so it is the light, and not the snow, that is white. Afterwards, when the snow melts and loses all its crystal surfaces and just turns into water, then you can see the ground through it. Ground, being dull, is not a very good reflector of light, so there is nothing bright any longer. Isn’t it a wonderful thing that water turned into crystals by the cold gives us this wonderful light? And that light itself is made up of seven colours? Nature is full of miracles, y