An easy one....Water and Steam.

JackKelly

Ok this one definitely has an easy answer. I was in the shower and i was thinking;

Obviously glass is transparent, and so is water. So when you put water on glass you can still see throught it. But if you heat the water and allow it to evaporate and collect on the glass, it will no longer be transparent.
Basically, why can you see through liquid water, and not gas water?
Any answer ive gotten has been along the lines of gas being in an agitated state, unlike water. But how does this matter when the steam is settled on the glass,surely it isnt agitated than?

breadmonkey

This is speculation but,

It might be that the steam settles on the glass in millions of very tiny droplets, so the light passing through gets refracted in all directions and you can't see through.

dudara

That's it alright. The water droplets act to diffuse light.

causal

Yeah I agree with the guys.
It's the same phenomenon with fog and mist, and on a slightly larger scale with raindrops on your car windscreen.

"I can see clearly now the rain has gone"
- those Hothouse Flowers knew their stuff

causAl

ApeXaviour

TimAy wrote:

Basically, why can you see through liquid water, and not gas water?

Gaseous water is transparent, at least in its pure form. The "steam" you are referring to is water vapour / tiny condensed droplets as the others explained above. A simple example of this.. look at your kettle when it's boiling. If it's anything like mine, the cloudlike steam won't begin to appear until about a centimetre away from the spout. The invisible bit before it is the actual steam, water in its gas form, before it gets all mixed with and cooled by the air.