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Voltman
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How can you see raindrops if water is transparent?
negitron said:For the same reason you can see air bubbles in water. These materials have different indexes of refraction, which means they bend light by different amounts, simplistically speaking. Another effect of two materials with differing refractive indexes in contact is that the boundary between them tends to reflect light. Both of these effects combine to make a transparent object in a transparent medium visible.
Note that diamond, which has a refractive index nearly identical to water is almost completely invisible when immersed in that liquid.
negitron said:Note that diamond, which has a refractive index nearly identical to water is almost completely invisible when immersed in that liquid.
cepheid said:My high school physics teacher did a good trick. I think it was glass in glycerin (or something). Very similar indices of refraction. You couldn't see any part of a test tube that he had immersed in a beaker full of the stuff. He teased us that it was "molten glass" (i.e. that he had actually melted the test tube).
Although water is transparent, it can still refract and reflect light. When raindrops fall through the air, they interact with light in different ways, causing them to be visible to the human eye.
Raindrops can be difficult to see if they are small or if the lighting conditions are not ideal. In order for raindrops to be visible, they need to be large enough to refract and reflect light, and there needs to be enough light for this to occur.
Raindrops can be seen from many angles, but the angle at which they are viewed can affect their visibility. For example, raindrops may be more difficult to see when looking directly down at them, but may be more visible when viewed at an angle.
When light passes through a raindrop, it can be split into different colors due to refraction. This is similar to how a prism splits light into a rainbow. The colors may also appear different depending on the angle and intensity of the light.
There is no limit to the number of raindrops that can be seen at once, but the visibility may be affected by the size and density of the raindrops, as well as the lighting conditions. In heavy rain, there may be so many raindrops that they all blend together and appear as a continuous stream of water.