In Case You’re Curious: Why Rainbows Arc

14 April 2008

Have you ever been curious as to why Rainbows arc? Well I was and as a result research it. What I found out was very interesting. It starts with white sunlight (a combination of all the colors in the rainbow) traveling through the atmosphere until it hits water droplets as they fall from a passing storm. When a beam of light hits one of these droplets, one of two things can happen: The light could simply pass through, or, more interestingly, it could hit the front of the droplet, bend as it enters, then reflect off the back of the droplet and leave through the front, back toward us. This is the light that forms rainbows. The amount light bends as it passes through the droplet depends on the light’s wavelength, or color — red light bends the most, orange and yellow slightly less, and so on, down to violet, which bends the least… this creating the arch in the sky.