Snow density: What percent of snow is water?

Snow can be an inspiration for a math activity. Have students calculate the percent of snow that is water. This will vary, as light and fluffy snow has much less water content than heavy and wet snow.

To do this, have students fill a measuring cup with snow. I used a one-liter container marked in milliliters and filled it to the top, 1000 mL. In metric, 1 mL takes up 1 cubic centimeter of volume. So this amount of snow is also 1000 cubic centimeters.

Let the snow melt. Then divide the measurement of water by the original measurement of snow. 

In this case, the snow melted down to 180 mL, and 180/1000 = 0.18. The snow was 18% water! Also, remind students that the density of water is very close to 1 gram per cubic centimeter. Thus, you can also say that the density of snow for this example was 0.18. Snow density can vary from 0.05 for very light snow to 0.5 for heavy packed snow.

As an extension of this activity, you might ask students to calculate the weight of a specific depth of the snow that was tested, over an area such as the roof of a house. This is easiest with metric measurements because 1 cubic centimeter of water weighs 1 gram.