What causes a rainbow?

Answer 1

Two days ago, the question of the day was "Why is the sky blue?" For some reason, that triggered a flood of "What causes a rainbow?" questions, so let's walk through the nature of rainbows.

You know that light is made up of a collection of many colors: red, orange, yellow, green, blue, indigo, violet. That is why a prism can take in white light on one side and produce its own mini-rainbow on the other side. To understand rainbows, you have to start by understanding what is happening inside a prism to let it separate white light into its colors.

A prism is a triangular piece of glass or plastic. To get it to produce a mini-rainbow, you allow a narrow strip of white light to fall on one face of the triangle.


The angle between the ray of light coming in and the ray coming out of the drops is 42 degrees for red and 40 degrees for violet. You can see in this diagram that the angles cause different colors from different drops to reach your eye, forming a circular rim of color in the sky -- a rainbow! In a double rainbow, the second bow is produced because droplets can have two reflections internally and get the same effect. The droplets have to be the right size to get two reflections to work.

good luck with rainbows!


-chad

Answer 2

When light passes from air into water (or glass), or water into air, different colors are refracted (bent) a different amount. Red is refracted the least, and violet the most. And so, the colors are separated into a spectrum, or rainbow. When raindrops are in the air, most light is either reflected off of the drops or goes right through them. If the light enters at certain angles, the light enters the drop, is reflected inside, and then exits the drop. Entering and exiting the drop, the colors are separated. You see red light come from a raindrop because that drop is at just the correct angle (about 42 degrees) between your eye and the sun so that the red light coming from the sun is refracted, reflected, and refracted again right into your eye. Blue light comes from another raindrop at a slightly different angle. All the raindrops that are at a certain angle between your eye the sun form a circle in the sky. That is why the rainbow is a circle.

Answer 3

A rainbow is sunlight spread out into its spectrum of colors and diverted to the eye of the observer by water droplets. The "bow" part of the word describes the fact that the rainbow is a group of nearly circular arcs of color all having a common center.

Answer 4

It's sunlight shining through mist in the air. The water droplets act as a prism and split the sunlight into it's component wavelengths. What you see is the rainbow.

Answer 5

A RAINBOW SHOWING COLORS OF THE SPECTRUM WITH VIOLET ON THE INSIDE AND RED ON THE OUTSIDE WHICH APPEARS WHEN THE SUN SHINES AFTER A BRIEF THUNDERSTORM IN THE LATE AFTERNOON.....MOST OF THE COLORS THAT ARE IN A RAINBOW VARY FROM VIOLET,INDIGO,BLUE,GREEN,YELLOW,ORANGE AND RED...I HOPE THAT ANSWERED YOUR QUESTION ABOUT THE BEAUTIFUL RAINBOWS WE OFTEN CAN SEE.

Answer 6

The sunlight reflecting through raindrops

Answer 7

go to this website and see. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rainbow

Answer 8

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