Natural Phenomena

Rainbow

What is a rainbow?

Rainbow is an arc of colors appearing opposite the sun as a result of the refraction of sunlight in rain.

Rainbows are created by sunlight shine and water droplets. Rainbows are created by refraction and reflection of the sun’s rays in falling rain or mist. Sunlight strikes the front of the raindrop and is refracted separated into its colors. Then the light hit the back of the raindrop and is reflected, and is refracted again as it leaves the raindrop.

What makes colors in the rainbow?

The sunlight consists of all wavelengths of visible light, which we simply see as white because they are all combined together. When light is refracted, different wavelengths refract at different angles, therefore the various colors are separated. Rainbows have 7 colors; however, they actually consist of every color. The color is constantly changing from red to violet.

Each of the colors presents in white light are bent a different amount in passing through the drop. 7 colors in a rainbow is formed follow the order: Red, Orange, Yellow, Green, Blue, Indigo, and Violet. The red bends the least and violet bends the most. The rest of the color lies in between the red and the violet.

Rainbow angle 

The angle of incident equals the angle of reflection The angle we want to find is the one between the incoming ray and outgoing ray which is named e The sum of the interior angles of a triangle is 180 degree. From several counting, the degree is 42 (e = 42.0 degree)

Nature Rainbow

Nature rainbow is created by nature.  We can see the rainbow when it rains or at the waterfall under the sunshine.


Manmade Rainbows 

Manmade Rainbows are the rainbows that are created by human. We can make our own rainbows in many ways We can use a garden hose, a sprinkler, and a water spout out, and the sunlight to make our own rainbows. We can use a prism and a flashlight to make a rainbow We can also make a rainbow by using a flashlight, a round container, and a large piece of cardboard.
Stern, an artist, and visual arts professor, uses fire trucks, boats, pumps, and hoses to create rainbows at Germany.

Source: Thao_The_Rainbow,
http://brantancan.co.uk/rainbow.htm http://www.albemarle.cc.nc.us/~aaldridg/mat172/proje ct2.html http://www.psupress.org/samplechapters/justataste_lee. HTML http://www.unidata.ucar.edu/staff/blynds/rnbw.html Overheim, R.Daniel and Wagner, David L. Light and Color.1982. Reese, Ronald Lane. University of Physics.1998.