Eli5: What causes the rainbow effect to appear when sunlight shines through a piece of glass?
In: Physics
White light is made of all the colors of light, and each color of light has a different energy. Red is the lowest. Violet is the highest. When light goes through a weird piece of glass, or a rain drop, its path gets bent. The higher energy light is bent the least. The lower energy light is bent the most. This spreads the light out into a ‘fan’ of colors.
A rainbow is the combined effect of the color fans of thousands of raindrops.
The glass acts as a prism from certain angles. Sunlight is white, meaning that it has all colors of the spectrum at once. At some angles, the glass separates these wavelengths so that each color shines at a slightly different angle, creating the rainbow effect.
Latest Answers