The outdoor rainbow experiment is explained below
Fill the glass with water and place the mirror in it face up at a 45º angle, coming about halfway out of the glass. Place them in strong sunlight coming as straight down as possible. (Do this outside at noon if you need to.) Position the glass so that the sun rays go through the water and hit the mirror. Hold the white paper vertically off to one side, so the seven colors of the rainbow are produced on it.
b. Now stir the water gently with the pencil and watch what happens on the paper or wall. What happens? Can you think of a reason why?
2007-07-22 03:52:06 · 3 answers · asked by olu 1 in Science & Mathematics ➔ Physics
The rain bow pattern gets disrupted, but apart from that, what happens I too don't know, since I never did that experiment. Pl. do the experiment and report the results.
2007-07-22 03:56:13 · answer #1 · answered by Swamy 7 · 0⤊ 0⤋
Likely, stirring the water changes the water surface from flat to wavy. The light passing through the water must pass through a flat water surface. A prism that diffracts light into a rainbow of colors has very flat surfaces. Waves on the water will distribute light (photons) more evenly ruining the separation of colors effect.
2007-07-22 04:10:10 · answer #2 · answered by Kes 7 · 0⤊ 0⤋
The rainbow pattern gets disturbed. May be it may give you broken patterns of rainbow across the horizon or you may get several rainbows vertically.
This happens as the layers of the water get disturbed and the angle of incidence of light which you set as 45 degree is no more 45 degree
2007-07-22 04:12:50 · answer #3 · answered by LEPTON 3 · 0⤊ 0⤋