if light travels in straight lines then why is a rainbow arched????

Answer 1

You can see a rainbow when the light is behind you. It's reflected by the raindrops. Light of a particular colour is refected by the raindrops that are at the correct angle between the straight line from the sun to the raindrop and the straight line from the raindrop to your eye. The raindrops at that angle are in a circle, although of course there aren't any under the ground so you only see an arc. If you're in a plane and the sun and a raincloud are in the right places, sometimes it's possible to see the whole circle.

Answer 2

Light do not go in straight lines. Rainbows are arched because the air and the water refracts, reflects, or diffuse the light.

Answer 3

It is due to the diffraction of the colours as beams of light are separated by being bounced through the internal surfaces of tiny water particles in the air (often after a rain shower).

The light is still travelling in straight lines - it is different 'lines' of light split into component wavelengths that our brains interpret as varying colours. These are still travelling in straight lines (allowing for the tiny variations as it is a 'waveform') travelling to your eye from the source (usually our sun).

The light doesn't travel to Earth, make an arch, hit the ground and then go running off to find your eyes...

Answer 4

A rainbow is curved because it is caused by internal reflections and refractions in a spherical water droplet. The red light (for instance) will be reflected by all the drops where angle between the incoming sun and a reflection to your eye is a certain amount, and that will apply along a circular locus. Green light will be a different angle, and so on, producing concentric circles of the different colours.

Answer 5

The basic phenomena of rainbow formation is that sunlight splits on rain drops and divides itself into VIBGYOR -the seven colors.

Now, since rain drops are spherical in shape the splitted rays when viewed on a surface give a round shape (an arched appearance).
This wouldn't be the case if you split white light on a triangular prism in a lab.

Answer 6

A rainbow is in reality a circle. You only see the upper part of it because the ground hides the rest.

A rainbow is a circle because the refracted light only comes from those raindrops which are positioned in a circle relative to your eye.

Answer 7

Cause it wants to be arched. you cannot stop it. The air bends the colours into loop holes and causes the light to expand and refract into polarised tunnels. This causes the "Capalytulus effect" where the light becomes into decibalised velocity and retracts into a volatile radius of atmospheric bezoate hydroxide making the rainbow arched and full of colour variation.

Answer 8

For starters, easy does not consistently return and forth in quickly lines (ref a million). Rainbows are curved at an perspective of 40 two levels because of the bending of sunshine (two times) because it is going by the droplets.

Answer 9

The earth is round; thus, the water refracting the light that we see as a rainbow is suspeneded as a portion of a sphere above the surface, rather than in a flat plane.

Answer 10

becouse it has to do with the breaking point of the light, you, the observer, are at a central point from the break of light. if you could see a total cloud of water you would see a circle like you sometimes see from a aeroplane or arount the moon on moisty nights, but usually, half or mire of the arch is hidden behind the horison (not actually hidden ofcourse but not existant), it has hoever nothing to do with the course of light in vacuum but with it passing trough miniscule drops of water in the air, thats why it only apears in rain or mist.