The color of water is a subject of both scientific study and popular misconception. While relatively small quantities of water are observed by humans to be colorless, pure water has a slight blue tint that becomes a deeper blue as the thickness of the observed sample increases. The blue hue of water is an intrinsic property and is caused by selective absorption and scattering of white light. Impurities dissolved or suspended in water may give water different colored appearances.

The intrinsic natural color of liquid water may be demonstrated by looking at a white light source through a long pipe, filled with purified water, that is closed at both ends with a transparent window. The light turquoise blue color is caused by weak absorption in the red part of the visible spectrum.

For most substances, absorptions in the visible spectrum are usually attributed to excitations of electronic energy states. However, water is a simple 3-atom molecule, H₂O, and all its electronic absorptions occur in the ultraviolet region of the electromagnetic spectrum and are therefore not responsible for the color of water in the visible region of the spectrum.^{[citation needed]}

PHASE 2 (aka Lonny Wood) is one of the most influential and well known New York City aerosol artists. Mostly active in the 1970s, Phase 2 is generally credited with originating the "bubble letter" style of aerosol writing, also known as "softies". He was also influential in the early hip-hop scene.

Phase 2 is from The Bronx, and attended DeWitt Clinton High School along with a number of other early graffiti artists. Many famous graffiti writers of the early 1970s would meet at a doughnut shop across from the school called the Coffee Shop before heading down to the subway station at 149th Street and Grand Concourse to watch tagged trains on the IRT line pass by. Phase 2 was mentored in graffiti by his friend and neighbor Thomas Lee aka Lee 163d!, one of the pioneers of graf writing in The Bronx.

He began writing in late 1971 under the name Phase 2, a moniker which had a rather mundane provenance. As Phase 2 would later recall, "the previous year we'd given this party. We were getting ready to give another one and I said, 'We'll call this one Phase Two.' I don't know why, but I was stuck on the name. It had meaning for me. I started writing 'Phase 2.'"