Ask Tappity: Science Questions for Kids > What is Snow?
What is Snow?
Snowballs, snowshoes, snow angles - what exactly are they all made of? Watch this video to find out, or read our explanation below!
Snow is Frozen Water Vapor
Snow isn’t exactly frozen rain. A frozen raindrop would be a little ball of ice, whereas snowflakes are those beautiful little crystals. What accounts for the difference? Well, both are ice, but snowflakes form when gaseous water vapor in the upper atmosphere freezes directly into a solid - skipping the liquid phase altogether! That’s called deposition.
Snow Forms When Clouds Are Below Freezing
Cold water vapor (water as a gas) in the air has a hard time spontaneously changing into a liquid, even if it's below the boiling point of water. It actually needs something to form into a liquid onto (this is called a nucleation site, if you want to get technical). That usually takes the form of tiny dust particles floating around in the upper atmosphere. But if there isn't anything to grab onto, the water vapor can just keep getting colder, and colder, and colder, without ever turning into water, until it's actually below freezing, and still a gas! When this supercooled gas finally comes into contact with a dust particle, it freezes right onto it, and this process is what forms the crystalline snowflakes we all know and love.
How to Freeze a Water Bottle in Seconds
You can create a similar process in your very own home, and get an almost magical effect at the same time. Because water requires a nucleation site to freeze, if you put distilled water in the freezer, it won’t turn into ice. Distilled water has had nearly all of the non-water particles removed, leaving no solids for the water to freeze onto. So when you take it out, you’ll have “supercooled” water - liquid water below the freezing point of water. Slam this bottle of superwater onto the table, and if you’re lucky, the subsequent jostling will kick-start random crystal formation, and once one solid crystal forms, the rest of the water will freeze onto that crystal, until the whole bottle freezes, right in front of your eyes!
Snow Facts for Kids
Got snow questions? We’ve got snow answers!
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The best snowballs are made with snow that is 3-5% liquid water. If you squeeze the snow in your hands and just a small amount of water comes out, you’ve got good snowball snow.
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Frost is a lot like snow, except it forms near the ground, instead of in the upper atmosphere. When water vapor is below freezing and comes into contact with something like a window pane or blade of grass, it can freeze directly onto it. It’s also just like dew formation, except at temperatures below freezing.
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Snow is not the same as frozen rain. If raindrops form and then freeze, and fall all the way to the ground, then that is hail.
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According to scientists, most snow is technically safe to eat. However, it can pick up impurities from the ground that make it unsafe.
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Asking the “real” color of anything is a bit misleading, since color is nothing more than how our brain interprets the light going into it. If it looks white, then it’s white! However, the color of snow comes from a different process than something like paper. Color for most things comes from pigmentation, and small pieces of it would look the same color as large swaths of it. However, individual snowflakes are clear, and it's only in large quantities that they reflect light in a way that appears to us as white. The same thing is true of polar bear hairs!
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