Rainbow - Scientific explanation

Full featured rainbow in Wrangell-St. Elias National Park, Alaska.Rainbow in the spray and mist of the waterfall at Takakkaw Falls, CanadaA

rainbow

is an optical and meteorological phenomenon that causes a nearly continuousspectrum of light to appear in the sky when the Sun shines onto droplets of moisture inthe Earth's atmosphere. It takes the form of amulticolouredarc, with red on the outsideand violet on the inside. A

double rainbow

includes a second, fainter, arc with colors inthe opposite order.Even though a rainbow spans a continuous spectrum of colours, traditionally the fullsequence of colours is most commonly cited as red, orange, yellow, green, blue, indigoand violet. It is commonly thought that indigo was included due to the different religious

connotations of the numbers six and seven at the time of Isaac Newton's work on light,despite its lack of scientific significance and the poor ability of humans to distinguishcolours in the blue portion of the visual spectrum.

Scientific explanation

The rainbow effect can be observed whenever there are water drops in the air andsunlight shining from behind the observer at a low altitude or angle. The most spectacular rainbow displays when half of the sky is still dark with draining clouds and the observer is at a spot with clear sky overhead. The rainbow effect is also commonly seen near waterfalls or fountains. Rainbow fringes can sometimes be seen at the edges of backlitclouds and as vertical bands in distant rain or virga. The effect can also be artificiallycreated by dispersing water droplets into the air during a sunny day.In a very few cases, a moonbow, or night-time rainbow, can be seen on strongly moonlitnights. As human visual perception for colour in low light is poor, moonbows are mostoften perceived to be white.Rainbows may also appear in the spray of a water fountainThe rainbow's appearance is caused by dispersion of sunlight as it is refracted by(approximately spherical) raindrops. The light is first refracted as it enters the surface of the raindrop, reflected off the back of the drop, and again refracted as it leaves the drop.The overall effect is that the incoming light is reflected back over a wide range of angles,with the most intense light at an angle of about

40°–42°.

This angle is independent of thesize of the drop, but does depend on its refractive index. As seawater has a higher refractive index than rain water, the radius of a 'rain'bow in a sea spray is smaller than atrue rainbow. This is visible to the naked eye by a misalignment of these bows .Since the water is dispersive, the amount that the sunlight is bent depends upon thewavelength, and hence colour, of the light's constituent parts. Blue light is refracted at agreater angle than red light, but because the area of the back of the droplet has a focal point inside the droplet, the spectrum crosses itself, and therefore the red light appearshigher in the sky, and forms the outer colour of the rainbow. Contrary to popular belief,the light at the back of the raindrop does not undergo total internal reflection; however,light that emerges from the back of the raindrop does not create a rainbow between theobserver and the Sun. The spectra emitted from the back of the raindrop do not have amaximum of intensity, as the other visible rainbows do, and thus the colours blendtogether and do not form a rainbow.

A raindrop has been placedinside a half sphere so thatthe scattered light can beseen. People seeing this oneraindrop from differentdirections would preceive itas either red, yellow, green, blue or violet (or colourless).Light r ays enter a raindropfrom one direction (typicallya straight line from the Sun), reflect off the back of theraindrop, and fan out as theyleave the raindrop. The lightleaving the rainbow is spreadover a wide angle, with amaximum intensity of 40.6°– 42°.White light separates intodifferent colours ( wavelengths) on enteringthe raindrop because red lightis refracted by a lesser anglethan blue light. On leavingthe raindrop, the red rayshave turned through a smaller angle than the blue rays, producing a rainbow.Some rainbows appear to be exceptionally close. This one is formed by a waterfall and isless than 20 feet away from the camera.A rainbow does not actually exist at a location in the sky, but rather is an optical phenomenon whose apparent position depends on the observer's location. All raindropsrefract and reflect the sunlight in the same way, but only the light from some raindropsreaches the observer's eye. These raindrops are perceived to constitute the rainbow bythat observer. The position of a rainbow in the sky is always in the opposite direction of the Sun with respect to the observer, and the interior is always slightly brighter than theexterior. The bow is centred on the shadow of the observer's head, or more exactly at theantisolar point (which is below the horizon during the daytime), appearing at an angle of approximately 40°–42° to the line between the observer's head and its shadow. As aresult, if the Sun is higher than 42°, then the rainbow is below the horizon and cannot beseen as there are usually not enough raindrops between the horizon (that is: eye height)and the ground, to contribute. One exception is when the observer is at the top of amountain or a similar vantage point, for example an aeroplane (see below). Another exception occurs when the rainbow is produced by a garden sprinkler. In this case to getsufficient drops they must be very small.