This year for new year vacation, I went to Alappuzha (a beautiful place in Kerala) with my family and on our way back home, we noticed rainbows and started enjoying this eye feasting mesmerizing weather phenomena seeing and also by clicking the photos. The same photo (double rainbow) I have shared below, so that you can also enjoy. In a while more cars, lorries also started parking on the side of the National Highway and were enjoying this. People of all age groups loved to watch the rainbows, I think, this is because as they are colorful they make us to think that the world around us is also colorful irrespective of the pandemic.
Later, we started to discuss what causes this alluring phenomena and why they are in semicircular shape and some more questions. So, I thought in this post we can see what causes the rainbow, so in future we can enjoy them by knowing the science behind it. If you can recall, most of us might have noticed that the rainbows are formed after rain. Yes, because for a rainbow to form the atmosphere needs water droplets and the sun rays. So, now we might be wondering then every time, when the rain comes we should be able to see a, rainbow but that does not happen, this is because for a rainbow to form the sun's position, water droplets and observers position is important.
For a person to see a rainbow the sun should be present in your back near the horizon like in the morning or evening and the water droplets, maybe rain, fog, mist, sprinklers or waterfalls should be there. When the sun rays pass through water droplets, refraction and total internal reflection take place and forms a rainbow. See the image below to understand.
Thus the white light when passes through water drops they refract and disperse, separate the spectrum colors (Violet, Indigo, Blue, Green, Yellow, Orange and Red) and reflect and refract them as rainbows.
Image source: twinkl.com
Do you know that the rainbows are actually in full circle?
Image source: oskarslidums on reddit
Then you might be thinking, then why we see only half of them (semicircle) right...this is because of the presence of the ground near the observer. If one can see a rainbow from an Aeroplane or from above, we can see them as whole circle like the image shown above.
And some of us might have seen two rainbows, this is because inside the water droplet the light reflects twice and forms a secondary rainbow with inverse of colors that is Red inside and Blue outside. Similarly, there are different types of rainbows are available and sometimes even moonlight can produce rainbow known as Moonbow.
From now on when we see the rainbow, we will admire them with the science and identify the types and can explain to our kids, colleagues, parents the reason of this mesmerizing phenomena. Enjoying life with science will always give us a good feel.
Stay tuned! Hope this year will be colorful amidst the existing situations.
Happy New Year!
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