In the absence of a prism, what is making the photons in a rainbow congregate into bands of separate colors?

Question

And why are the colors are always in ROYGBV order?

In: 5

Answer 1

They’re not congregating – rainbows don’t physically exist.

We see that structure only because of the way our eyes work, and the spectrum of light that is visible to us.

If we could see infrared as another color it would be in the rainbow as well, and the same for ultraviolet. [Here’s an example.](https://twitter.com/statto/status/1297233651458093056)