Rainbows need two things.
1. Sunlight at an angle so that you can see it.
2. A rain drop or hail stone or other form of refractive light source.
The angle of the sun must be so that the light passes into a shower, thunderstorm, with little or no obstruction. The SIZE of the rainbow depends on where the sun is. Generally, you apply the oposet of geomotry to the sun's angle in the sky to the rainbow. The higher the sun, the lower the rainbow. the lower the sun, the higher the rainbow.
Most rainbows happen when the sun is at an elevation of around 23 1/2 degrees from the horizon.
Rainbows from showers and thunderstorms aren't the only rainbows though. Some appear in the sky from ice crystles that form and the pass at an angle having the same orintation and angle creating what is known as a "fire rainbow".
Hope this colors in a rainbow for you LOL.
I'll start you below with the source to Jet-Stream Online Meteorological Tools from the NWS. Try searches there - they work better. And you're more likely to find much safer sites to look in from there.
2006-12-27 16:37:04
·
answer #1
·
answered by Brian R Cross 3
·
0⤊
0⤋
Rainbows are formed when the sunlight shines through moisture.. most often after a rain or thunderstorm. That is the simple answer, but it has a lot to do with the refraction of light through the spherical shape of a raindrop or a drop of moisture.
Check out this link for way too much info:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rainbow
=D
2006-12-27 13:31:56
·
answer #2
·
answered by ehad46 2
·
0⤊
0⤋
Rainbows are caused by the refraction of sunlight through raindrops splitting the light into primary colors. For a rainbow to be, there has to be rain and sunshine both. The sun also has to be at the right angle to the raindrops in order to refract the light.
2006-12-27 13:31:21
·
answer #3
·
answered by tripledavis 2
·
0⤊
0⤋
There are 2 factors to this: a million. the reason you generally hear. Raindrops act like glass prisms, splitting the easy up into their diverse colorations. crimson easy isn't bent through passing by a prism as much as blue easy, and so the spectrum separates out into (so as) crimson, Orange, Yellow, green, Blue, Indigo, Violet. 2. The bit you in no way commonly get to take heed to. How do guy or woman, randomly spaced, raindrops make the curved shape? nicely, they do no longer, particularly. all of the raindrops that are in the photograph voltaic will bend (or refract, to offer it its sunday call) the sunshine that passes by them. It in order that occurs that in basic terms those that are passing by your line of sight to the rainbow are definitely bending the sunshine in direction of you. If somebody else have been finding on the same rainbow a mile down the line, they had see the same colorations in the same obvious place, however the sunshine they had see would be refracted through diverse raindrops. you need to %. a raindrop and (in case you think of you may quit time) get to the factor the place you will see it refract crimson easy, orange easy, yellow easy and so forth, through shifting your head up and down. it particularly is rather like those crystals you may dangle on your window to get little rainbows (spectra) on the different wall. the only different element to declare is that it is not constantly a single curve. If the photograph voltaic is robust sufficient, and the rainbow is obvious sufficient, seek for yet another reversed rainbow on the outdoors of it, this time with the crimson on the interior and the violet on the outdoors. Oh, and you may make your guy or woman rainbow in case you pinch a backyard hose and spray it in the air, consisting of your returned to the sunlight. There you may get an entire ring particularly than in basic terms an arc.
2016-12-15 09:26:00
·
answer #4
·
answered by ? 4
·
0⤊
0⤋
You can find a lot with a search engine
2006-12-27 13:29:07
·
answer #5
·
answered by jmwildenthal 2
·
0⤊
0⤋