Like the title says, how does a rainbow exist twice? If we could see every electromagnetic wavelength, would we see all of those “colors” in between the first and second ring? What phenomenon causes it to happen twice and always separated by what seems to be a fixed amount/distance from each other when they happen?
In: Physics
A normal rainbow is caused by the light being refracted as it enter a water dropplet, reflects off the back of the water dropplet and then refracts again when exiting the dropplet. Because of the shape of the water dropplet and the different refraction angles of different frequencies of light the different colors gets reflected in different directions. In a double rainbow the second weaker rainbow is caused by the light getting reflected three times inside the water dropplet instead of just once. This gives a different reflection angle then when the light only gets reflected once so you get two distinct rainbows, one weaker then the other. The second rainbow is technically always there but because it is weaker then the first it is not always visible in all light conditions. There can even be three rainbows in very rare lighting conditions when you see light reflected five times inside the water dropplet. The light reflects an even number of times, zero or two times, creates a rainbow towards the sun and forms rings around the sun.
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