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
Draw an imaginary line from the sun, to your eye, to the centre of the rainbow. That will always be a straight line. Draw another line from the sun, to any red part of the rainbow, to your eye. This will always give you the same angle. It’s the angle that spherical drops of water like to reflect the colour red at. So you see red in this part of the rainbow. Doing this with blue will always give you another angle. Green another.
The sky is full of raindrops. They all scatter the sun’s light and split it into colours. But the ones that form the rainbow for your eye are the ones that form exactly the right angle with the sun, to reflect a specific colour into your eye.
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