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
>shouldn’t you see many tiny rainbows
I’ll address this specifically as others have glossed over it.
You would see multiple rainbows if we had multiple suns. And if we were really close to the sun, we’d be dead, but there would also be no rainbows.
The sun is far enough away that the light coming from it acts a bit like a laser. All the light points in one direction. The sunlight hits the water droplets and reflect off it just like shining a laser pointer at a screen.
When you shine the laser pointer at the screen, only that spot on the screen lights up. Now imagine that the color of the light from the laser pointer changed based on where you pointed it on the screen, blue in the middle, through the color spectrum to red on the outside edge. As you move the laser around, you are only seeing specific colors in specific spots. If you expand the laser’s light from a dot to a disc big enough to light up the whole screen, you’ll see all the colors.
Now, while it’s true that each droplet shines all the colors of the rainbow, each of those colors are going in different directions and the only color you see is the one pointed at your face. And like the laser pointer and screen example, what color that is pointed at your face is determined by that droplet’s position in the sky.
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