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
Ok, having learned something from all the info here, here’s my attempt to ELI5 it: (I may be mixing up refract and reflect, but I’ll just pick one). Maybe ELI9,since we do need to talk about angles.
Sun hits a raindrop and light refracts off in all sorts of directions. If the drop is at a specific angle to you in relation to the sun, you will see that refracted light as a color. So for this example, lets say that angle is 45 degrees.
So for this example, you have the sun behind you and look directly away from it. We’ll call that point zero degrees. Now we know that a raindrop at 45 degrees from there will refract color to you. 45 degrees to the left you see red, 45 degrees up you see red, 45 degrees to the right you see red. Since every point 45 degrees from the center is showing you red, it forms a red circle around the center. You don’t see the bottom of the circle because the ground is there and you can’t see rain under the ground.
As for the other colors, each color in the rainbow is created by a slightly different angle. So at 44 degrees you see orange, 43 yellow, etc.
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