What makes colors in a rainbow

When a rainbow forms, the sunlight must hit the raindrops at a specific angle. This is why rainbows commonly occur in the late afternoon or dawn — the angle is usually the best at that time. When sun rays come in contact with the rain droplets, the sunlight is reflected. Then, the law of reflection starts acting as it would when you look through a glass window — besides seeing your own face, you can also see through it. The window can both reflect and transmit light, just like water. Some light crosses the air and water layer and starts slowing down.

It occurs because air is less dense than water. The speed reduction is called refraction because produces a bent angle in the light, which is why rainbows are shaped like an arc.

White light contains various colors, and each of them has a specific wavelength. Each wavelength travels at a different speed and they encounter a change that can be more or less dense. Consequently, colors separate.

The phenomenon is called dispersion. When the water-to-air interface is hit by the light, an angle is formed. It is bigger than the critical angle, and the rainbow can be seen due to the total internal reflection phenomenon.

Sometimes, the angle is smaller than the critical angle. Consequently, the light waves bend from the normal line path, contributing to the rainbow formation. The process is also considered refraction. Once the rays get refracted a second time, the wavelengths are impacted differently. The truth is that bows have that shape because of their formation. A rainbow is formed by light reflecting on water droplets. Since the raindrops reflect the sunlight, a new angle is formed, making the light move towards a different direction.

Therefore, rainbows are always an arc. The angle formed by the raindrops in the sunlight makes the light move in that pattern , which is why you always see the colors in that shape. Rainbows get their colors through the dispersion phenomenon.

The sunlight is white at first, but it has various colors on it. When the light starts traveling due to the angle formation, it splits. Then, you can see all the colors that it contains. Regular rainbows have red on the top and violet on the bottom. For example, when double rainbows are formed, one of them has the colors in reverse order.

The rainbow colors you can see are not pure. They are mixed and blurred due to normal human eyesight capabilities. Many people believe it only has seven: red, orange, yellow, green, blue, indigo and violet. Nonetheless, the human eye can pick out much more hues. If you take a close look at a rainbow, you might notice that it has more than seven colors. When the arc is big and clear, you can tell that many colors mix and overlap. The word rainbow originates from two Old English words: regn and boga.

It is actually made up of a myriad of individual spectral colours that have overlapped and mixed. Red the longest wavelength at around nm through to Violet the shortest wavelength in the sequence at nm.

The seven colour idea is still a popular one and it helps remember the order of the most recognisable colours in a rainbow. However, remember that there is also a whole range of colours, so many that we cannot distinguish them all with the naked eye. From a very early age, we're taught how to remember the colours of the rainbow using what is known as a mnemonic. This is a phrase that takes the first letter of each colour and makes up a new word which, in turn, creates a phrase that's easy to remember.

What are the colours of the rainbow? Fred John John 4 4 silver badges 9 9 bronze badges. Add a comment. Active Oldest Votes. Improve this answer.

First of all, water droplet do not need to be "floating in the air:" they only need to be there. The water droplets responsible for the rainbow can belong to a downpour. Secondly, we do not see them only after it rains. In the northern hemisphere, since storms generally travel from west to east, we can see them in the morning if the storm is approaching, thus the saying, "Rainbow or red sky in the morning sailors take warning Sign up or log in Sign up using Google.

Sign up using Facebook. Sign up using Email and Password. Post as a guest Name. Email Required, but never shown. Featured on Meta. Now live: A fully responsive profile. When the Sun is shining and there is rain as well you may see a rainbow in the sky! As sunlight passes through the water droplets, it is bent and split into the colors of the rainbow. Sunlight is known as visible or white light and is actually a mixture of all visible colors. Rainbows appear in seven colors because water droplets break white sunlight into the seven colors of the spectrum red, orange, yellow, green, blue, indigo, violet.