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.

Question

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

Answer 1

> **shouldn’t you see many tiny rainbows instead of one big one**

True there are many droplets, but there’s only one light source (typically). The Sun.

So each droplet forms a slightly different Sun-droplet-observer angle, which results in a slightly different apparent color for each droplet. The combined effect of this multitude of different colors is a rainbow.