My home is located at the lowermost of a huge mountain – the past few weeks, the weather’s been rather gloomy, raining most of the time. However, this morning, when I woke up, I saw a big rainbow starting near my house, and ending somewhere hidden at the back of the mountain. I was fascinated by the colours; but, I had forgotten how rainbows were made – I recalled something about crystals and reflections, but I couldn’t remember the entire explanation. Hence, I decided to search for the answer, and write an entry explaining the process.
Rainbows are formed after rain has poured through the sky, and many water droplets remain in the air. Sunlight is able to enter the water droplet, which causes the light to bend. As light reflects off from the inside of the droplet, it exits back out to your eyes. As the light is bended inside the water droplets, it is broken down into seven colours. An entire rainbow is many water droplets and the sunlight working together to make seven wonderful colours in the following order – red, orange, yellow, green, light blue, dark blue, purple.
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| Picture from climate.met.psu.edu |
There are two types of rainbows: primary rainbows and secondary rainbows. Primary rainbows are the most common – they are the rainbows you usually see in the sky after it rains. A secondary rainbow is the second, fainter, and higher up rainbow you sometimes see; they are caused due to the light being reflected twice within a raindrop. These rainbows are very rare.
To finish off – here is a youtube link of a man finding a double rainbow and crying over the intensity of it. The video is hilarious – especially considering that this was not a joke, the man did cry.
Hope you enjoyed this mini lesson on rainbows! J
Izzie
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