Why do rainbows occur

When light hits the rain at just the right angle, it is refracted through a raindrop and into our eyes, causing us to see a rainbow. But how does the "white" sunlight produce a multicolored rainbow? Sunlight, or "white" light, is actually made up of continuous bands of different colored light--red, orange, yellow, green, blue, indigo and violet.

Each color has a different wavelength, or frequency, which refracts slightly differently when it passes from one medium to another. As a result, white light can be broken up into its component colors by being passed through certain medium. For example, a prism can also create rainbows because the glass, like the raindrop, bends the different colors of light at slightly different angles.

Longer wavelengths are bent at larger angles, so longer wavelengths are bent less than shorter wavelengths. When sunlight hits a raindrop, the red light waves are bent at an angle of 42 degrees from their original direction from the sun.

Shorter violet light waves are only bent at an angle of 40 degrees. Rainbows occur when the light radiated from the sun. So, how dose the light travel through the water droplets and create seven-colored rainbows? Rainbows appear in seven colors because water droplets break sunlight into the seven colors of the spectrum.

You get the same result when sunlight passes through a prism. The water droplets in the atmosphere act as prisms, though the traces of light are very complex. When light meets a water droplet, it is refracted at the boundary of air and water, and enters the droplet, where the light is dispersed into the seven colors. The rainbow effect occurs because the light is then reflected inside the droplet and finally refracted out again into the air. A rainbow has seven colors because water droplets in the atmosphere break sunlight into seven colors.

A prism similarly divides light into seven colors. When light leaves one medium and enters another, the light changes its propagation direction and bends.

At the beginning of the coronavirus pandemic in the UK, children were encouraged by their schools and preschools to paint rainbows and display them at home on their windows as a message of hope and solidarity during uncertain times. Rainbows are one of the most admired meteorological phenomena across the globe, but how are they formed? Rainbows are formed when light from the sun is scattered by water droplets e. Refraction occurs when the light from the sun changes direction when passing through a medium denser than air, such as a raindrop.

Once the refracted light enters the raindrop, it is reflected off the back and then refracted again as it exits and travels to our eyes. Sunlight is made of many different wavelengths, or colours, that travel at different speeds when passing through a medium.

This causes the white light to split into different colours. A full rainbow is actually a complete circle, but from the ground we see only part of it. From an airplane, in the right conditions, one can see an entire circular rainbow. The sunlight shines on a water droplet. As the light passes into the droplet, the light bends, or refracts, a little, because light travels slower in water than in air because water is denser.

Then the light bounces off the back of the water droplet and goes back the way it came, bending again as it speeds up when it exits the water droplet. Light enters a water droplet, bending as it slows down a bit going from air to denser water. The light reflects off the inside of the droplet, separating into its component wavelengths—or colors.

When it exits the droplet, it makes a rainbow.