How are rainbows formed. I know it’s about refraction from water droplets, but shouldn’t you see many tiny rainbows instead of one big one.
In: Physics
Sunlight is what is called polychromatic light. This means it contains all visible wavelengths (red, orange, yellow, blue, green, indigo, violet) as well as wavelengths of light we cannot see (infrared, ultraviolet, x-ray, gamma-ray and so on). When this light from the sun refracts through a water molecule, all the light is separated. The longer wavelengths (red) will refract at a smaller angle then the shorter wavelengths (blue, violet). This is why we see red at the top of a rainbow and the blue colors at the bottom of a rainbow.
Now to address your question. Technically there are tiny rainbows from one water molecule, but we wouldn’t be able to see this refraction through a single water molecule just because there is not enough light to be received by our eye. It is a sum of all these that produces what we call a rainbow. Rainbows only occur when there are enough water molecules refracting light to be perceived by the human eye.
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