How Far Underwater Can Light Travel?
Unlike air particles, light traveling through water quickly loses its color and intensity.
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Physics of Light
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If light, or rather the photons that construct light, existed in a vacuum, they would travel forever in any given direction. In reality, a beam of light experiences multiple disturbances such as absorption, reflection and refraction as it moves through space. This finite distance depends on the situation of the light being transmitted, direction and regions of space through which it will travel.
Short-Term Distance
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According to the laws of physics, more than half of a light source becomes absorbed within the first three feet of penetrating the water surface. Red, one of the four primary colors that make the lighting spectrum, is the first to be absorbed.
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Further Down
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At 33 feet, the yellow pigment becomes fully absorbed, leaving only 20 percent of the original amount of surface light remaining.
Long-Term Distance
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As light photons travel through the water, the amount of visible light remaining decreases exponentially. The green color on the light spectrum is next to go at 165 feet, leaving blue light as the final visible source (hence the common hue of underwater photography). By 330 feet only 0.5 percent of the light remains.
Qualities of Light
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Although different sources of light might give off different percentages of colors within the lighting spectrum--a green and blue dominant fluorescent compared to the sun, for instance--the penetration level and consistency remains the same.
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