• Question: what makes rainbows?

    Asked by claire13 to Indi, Jarv, John, Ken, Vicky on 14 Mar 2012.
    • Photo: John Prytherch

      John Prytherch answered on 14 Mar 2012:

      Short answer, water.

      The light that we see and that comes from the sun can be thought of as a wave, and is made up of a ‘spectrum’ of different colours, with each colour having a different wave length (the distance from the peak of a wave to the next peak).

      When light hits a water droplet in the air, the light is reflected and refracted). The amount that this happens depends on the wavelength, which is different for each colour. Hence, the light is split into all the different colours that make it up, and we see this as a rainbow.

    • Photo: Jarvist Moore Frost

      Jarvist Moore Frost answered on 14 Mar 2012:

      Just to follow John’s answer, the first rainbow you see is where the sunlight has reflected once within the water droplet, and the rainbow is blue on the side and red on the outside. If you’re really lucky you might see a double rainbow, where droplets with secodary reflection form an rainbow around the first, but this has the colours reversed (red on the inside) and looks really cool.

    • Photo: Vicky Young

      Vicky Young answered on 14 Mar 2012:

      Damn I thought it was leprechauns….

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