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How do rainbows work?

Now I know that rainbows are formed due to refraction of light from the sun hitting raindrops and light waves leave at varying angles between 40-42 degrees or somewhere around there. Also, that they’re round.

What I don’t understand is how it’s consistent, like I assume it’s hitting many raindrops, but all these drops are in different places so why does it still form a nice circle. Furthermore, why isn’t the whole sky a rainbow if it’s raining and thus hitting all the drops. I suspect the angle of the sun is playing a part but I’m not a science man.

Please help me get this thought out of my head.

red_pigeon ,

This answer is purely fictional:

Imagine all the rain drops forming a film of glass. Now this glass is curved like a cylinder since rain is basically water flowing from a pipe in the sky. So you are looking at the sun through a curved glass hence you see the curved bow. Now your eyes are spherical in shape, hence the light reflected off the cylinder will appear in colours. Go outside and look at any cylinder, you’ll see rainbow colours.

antlion ,
@antlion@lemmy.dbzer0.com avatar

It’s explained pretty well in Optical Physics for Babies. Take a peek in the kids books section next time you’re at a book store. It also explains double rainbows, and why the second one has the colors in reverse order and is always more faint. This is a detail they got wrong in my favorite episode of Bluey: Rain.

dependencyinjection OP , (edited )

Thank you. I will have a look for this book.

Edit: I don’t understand why you’re being downvoted for this.

satan ,

This is a cool explanation:

youtu.be/MGyKQvSzdHE?si=-LV8NS0XRcJj961Q

dependencyinjection OP ,

Thanks Satan, that was very cool.

Strange channel too < 3k subs and SteveMould is in the comments.

SwearingRobin ,

You’re almost there. It has to do with the angle of the sun and the water drops relating to the view point. Rainbows only show when the sun is behind you, and if you imagine a cone going out from the viewpoint outwards you get the possible paths of the rainbow (different radius different wavelength and therefore color)

A similar concept happens in certain reflective surfaces (metal pots and pans, car hoods and much more). You always see the tiny scratches in circles, but if you alter the angle in any way you keep seeing different scratch circles. This is because the circle you see in any given angle is the exactly the scratches that are turned just perfectly to reflect the light in the perfect way. It does not mean that the scratches you see at any given moment are the only ones. It means there are plenty, and only a few more visible at a time.

To me, playing around with the second concept (much easier to manipulate yourself and see) made me understand rainbows much better.

dependencyinjection OP ,

Thanks.

I hadn’t considered the placement of the sun being behind me, but can confirm I was walking each when I saw a rainbow the other day, it was evening meaning the sun was setting in the west. So behind me.

Also, the scratches on cars is a god damn revelation to me and something I had no idea about. I will be playing around with looking at these now so thanks for bringing that up.

SwearingRobin ,

Happy to help! Now what I don’t get under this knowledge is double and triple rainbows. If anyone can explain that to me I would be very grateful.

dependencyinjection OP ,

Sometimes the light reflects twice off the back of the raindrop; this leads to the secondary rainbow. The second reflection causes the order of the colors in the bow to reverse.

This seems to be the how sourced from Here

SwearingRobin ,

Thanks for the reply, it hasn’t fully clicked yet, but I’ll get there once I think about it some more.

Lost_My_Mind ,

You know more about rainbows than I do. I thought you were going to ask how rainbows are formed, and I was going to say magic.

dependencyinjection OP ,

I mean it it’s pretty magical though isn’t it.

ImplyingImplications ,

Not an expert, but here’s my understanding:

A beam of white light contains many wavelengths. If it hits something that bends the light it causes the different wavelengths to bend at different angles. The light ends up coming out as a rainbow with each wavelength being bent to a different degree. Not all of these colours might hit your eye.

If you have a whole bunch of prisms in the air, they all separate and scatter different colours of light in different directions. The red light from one prism might hit your eye but the other colours coming from that prism might not. The orange light from another prism might hit your eye but the other colours do not.

A rainbow is a pattern created by red light from some prisms, orange light from others, yellow from others, etc. You only see one colour from one prism, but together they form a pattern. If you move the rainbow moves too. Prisms that were sending red light into your eye are no longer doing so. Others that missed your eye are now hitting it. The pattern stays the same but it’s being created by different prisms now.

dependencyinjection OP ,

Thank you.

This helped massively and I am feeling happy this is resolved for me.

morphballganon ,

It does fill the whole sky. You only see the arc because our eyes can only see a limited range of colors.

dependencyinjection OP ,

Wait. So a bird for instance might see something different?

Are there sections of the visible light spectrum we can see in the sky too that we can’t see because we are at the wrong angle? Like is that why we are always at the centre of the rainbow?

I still don’t understand how it forms the whole ring though. Like I could understand a sliver of it, but not really grasping how it can span such a distance or if it’s from a particular drop or many drops.

Inductor , (edited )

Here’s a circular rainbow from an aircraft a skydiver: img

EDIT: image embedding didn’t work

EDIT 2: not from a plane

EDIT 3: sorry for all the edits, fixed image

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