Blue Ice by MagikUnicorn
Close
Hover over top left image to zoom.
Click anywhere to exit.
Members remain the original copyright holder in all their materials here at Renderosity. Use of any of their material inconsistent with the terms and conditions set forth is prohibited and is considered an infringement of the copyrights of the respective holders unless specially stated otherwise.
Description
Blue ice occurs when snow falls on a glacier, is compressed, and becomes part of the glacier. Air bubbles are squeezed out and ice crystals enlarge, making the ice appear blue.
Small amounts of regular ice appear to be white because of air bubbles inside them and also because small quantities of water appear to be colourless. In glaciers, the pressure causes the air bubbles to be squeezed out increasing the density of the created ice. Large quantities of water appear to be blue, as it absorbs other colours more efficiently than blue. Therefore, a large piece of compressed ice, or a glacier, would appear blue.
The blue color is sometimes wrongly attributed to Rayleigh scattering which is responsible for the color of the sky. Rather, ice is blue for the same reason that large quantities of water are blue: it is a result of an overtone of an oxygen-hydrogen (O-H) bond stretch in water which absorbs light at the red end of the visible spectrum. In the case of oceans or lakes, some of the light, hitting the surface of water, is reflected back directly but most of it penetrates the surface interacting with its molecules.
The water molecule can vibrate in different modes when light hits it. The red, orange, yellow, and green wavelengths of light are absorbed so that the remaining light is composed of the shorter wavelengths of blue and violet. This is the main reason why the ocean is blue. So, water owes its intrinsic blueness to selective absorption in the red part of its visible spectrum. The absorbed photons promote transitions to high overtone and combination states of the nuclear motions of the molecule, i.e. to highly excited vibrations.
Comments (20)
Faemike55
and it is absolutely stunning in real life - the carrier I was on traversed the Indian Ocean and the water was so crystal clear and almost a deep turquoise blue that you would swear by all the gods and goddesses that you could take a knife and cut a chunk out and use it as jewelry
anitalee
Cool
bakapo
yup, very cool!
BryceHoro
Very well done icescape.
rayag
Excellent done!!!
Jean_C
Superbe impression de brillance!
jmb007
bleu
DukeNukem2005
It is great!
jeffy3ds
tout bleu good job !!
Leije
Belle impression de relief !
blankfrancine
Cool render. Thanks for the info.
giulband
Absolutely fascinating !!!
jendellas
Thanks for the info, lovely image.
goodoleboy
Very interesting, but what I see is an overhead shot of a heaving ocean with a shark fin at the upper right. Excellent capture.
Richardphotos
very good Bryce and informative
Freethinker56
Great creation Bravo!
JaneEden
Excellent render and interesting description. hugs Jane xx
RodS
Awesome render, Real!
I just saw where an iceberg the size of Delaware just broke off the polar ice cap..
claude19
j'y verrai plutôt une ravine de maoraines...ces blocs de roches sous le lmit du glacier et qui sont éjectées sur qson bord par les colossales forces de déplacement !!! très belle image !!!
Glendaw
Very impressive likeness and wonderful information !