why rainbows were colorful?
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The water refracts visible lightwaves into its varying freqencies.\n\nRed, Orange, Yellow, Green, Blue, Indigo, and Violet.  It forms the acrostic, ROYGBIV.
566742
As spijk says, the rainbow is formed by the refraction (bending) of light as it passes trhough rain drops. But the reason an observer sees the rainbow as an "arc" is that the sunlight must be refracted at a certain constant critical angle between the arrival of the light ray and the path back to the observers eye for the colors to be seen. This angle occurs over an arc in relation to the observer.  Here's why:\n\n   There are three conditions necessary for the rainbow to be visible:\n\n  First, there has to be water droplets in the air (These   droplets may or may not be falling to the ground as rain), and -\n\nSecond: -  the sun must be behind the observer while looking at the rainbow - and -\n\nThird: - the light rays that become visible as the rainbow must pass through the raindrops at the critical angle.\n\nIf you draw these conditions out in three dimensions, it is apparent that the necessary conditions only prevail to the observer as an arc.  \n\nBy the way, the rainbow is not always a semi-circle! If you're airborne, above the droplets with the sun high in the sky, you will see the rainbow as a circle!\n\nI fly my own plane and have seen this condition on several occasions, and even took a picture of it once!\n\nNow you can understand why seeing rainbows is relatively rare - the conditions for their appearance are not very common, mainly because you have to have water droplets in the air at the same time that the sun is not blocked by clouds!  That's why the most common time to see a rainbow is after a relatively small afternoon thunderstorm cell passes your position (usally passing from west to east), dropping rain beneath it as it passes and then leaving clear sky behind allowing the sun rays to strike the raindrops.\n\nGo to the website below for diagrams on how the rainbow works! A picture is worth a thousand words, especially a picture of a rainbow! :-)\n\neo.ucar.edu/rainbows \n\nBy the way, good question!  You have a keen mind, keep asking questions!  After reading and doing your homework, its the best way to learn!\n\nHope this answer  helps.\n\nCharlieQ
199551
well nwhen white light goes through a prisdim, it breaks and turns into the colors of the rainbow. so when white light goes through the atmosphere, which acts like a prism, it breaks and we mostly see the blue
125458
Well I think they appear as lines; fat, multicolored, curved lines.  But they aren't really "there" where we see them.  That is, other people, say a mile away from you, will see the rainbow shifted from where you see it, and that's because the rainbow's apparent direction is relative to the sun's rays that are near you.  But is this the answer to your question?  Are you asking why they're not thin? straight?  Give us something, Bea.
26465
Sunlight is made up of all the colors of the rainbow: red, orange, yellow, green, blue, and violet. Some of the sunlight is reflected off the surface of the water, reflecting the color of the sky. Some of the sunlight penetrates the water and is scattered by ripples and particles in the water (this tinges the appearance of the ocean with the color of the particles). In deep water, much of the sunlight is scattered by the oxygen in the water, and this scatters more of the blue light.
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I am not sure what you exactly mean by "seperated" in your question.\n\nAre you asking about how rainbows form?  or why we see distinct colors in the rainbow?\n\nTiny water droplets which remain in the sky can act as a prism when the sun hits them, bending and seperating light based on its wavelength.\nWhite light from the sun is actually made up of a continuous range of light of varrying wavelengths.  When the light enters a medium which is optically more dense, the light is bent...and some wavelengths are bend more than others.  This process of bending the light seperates the white light out into a continous spectrum of light ranging from red all the way to purple in the sky.  There are no absolute boundries in this spectrum where "yellow" begins and "orange" ends, it is all continuous...we have just defined light of a certain range of wavelengths to be called a certain color.
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ah, what a wonderful question... my symphony looks like a rainbow, it's just that most of it is green like the grass, like the mountains in the summer... hmm, i just love it
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1. Red, orange, yellow, green, blue, indigo, and violet. Actually, the rainbow is a whole continuum of colors from red to violet and even beyond the colors that the eye can see.\n2. you can see a rainbow anywhere there is water around and you have the sun to your back.\n3.Sir Isaac Newton in his early physics experiments decided the colors of the rainbow
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Sometimes we see two rainbows at once, what causes this? We have followed the path of a ray of sunlight as it enters and is reflected inside the raindrop. But not all of the energy of the ray escapes the raindrop after it is reflected once. A part of the ray is reflected again and travels along inside the drop to emerge from the drop. The rainbow we normally see is called the primary rainbow and is produced by one internal reflection; the secondary rainbow arises from two internal reflections and the rays exit the drop at an angle of 50 degrees° rather than the 42°degrees for the red primary bow. Blue light emerges at an even larger angle of 53 degrees°. his effect produces a secondary rainbow that has its colors reversed compared to the primary, as illustrated in the drawing, adapted from the Science Universe Series Sight, Light, and Color. \nIt is possible for light to be reflected more than twice within a raindrop, and one can calculate where the higher order rainbows might be seen; but these are never seen in normal circumstances.
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Rainbows are formed because of the process of bending light knows as Refraction. different colors of light bend at different angles when they refract. When light from the sun enters a droplet of rain, it refracts a tiny bit causing the colors of light to spread apart, the light then bounces, or reflects, off of the back of the droppled and refracts once again as it leave the dropplet on the same side it entered. By the time the light reaches your eyes the refraction is so noticeable that you see all the colors of sunlight spread apart - creating a Rainbow
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hi, try this link .. its a nice one ..\n\nhttp://eo.ucar.edu/rainbows/
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there's a rainbow always after the rain
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A rainbow is a prismatic effect, a kind of optical illusion, because of water droplets in the air and the way the sun shines through them.
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It was almost like a rainbow of colors, from blue to red. It was mostly blue though.
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Double rainbows are a rarity.\n\n\n\n\n \nThe Double Rainbow\n\n \n\n\nEvery once in a while, if you get lucky, you may see a second rainbow on the outside of the first, brighter rainbow. This is the "secondary rainbow" which occurs when raindrops high in the atmosphere refract and reflect light back to the viewer. \n\nThese raindrops are higher than those which cause the "primary rainbow" and are special because they internally reflect the incoming sunlight twice rather than just once. \n\n\n\nNotice that the sunlight hits the bottom of the raindrop to make the secondary rainbow. There is still sunlight hitting the other parts of the raindrop, however, some of the light is simply transmitted through the raindrop without reflecting, and some light is reflected and refracted, but not into our eyes: that light is for someone else's rainbow. \n\nNotice also in the image at the top of the page that the sequence of colors in the secondary rainbow is switched compared to the primary bow. Why is this? \n\n\n\n\n\n--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
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Black, White are not in the rainbow either\n\nA rainbow is white light seen through a prism (the prism being\nthe raindrops).  The prism breaks the light into all the colors that make up white - so you do not see white because white is a combination of colors.\nBlack is an absence of light, so it is not in the rainbow.  Brown is a combination of rainbow colors, so you do not see it in the rainbow.
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An inverse rainbow is when the colors are reversed so that the red band of color is on the inside of the rainbow and the blue band is on the outside.  Moonbows, or, halos, are inversed. I wasn't aware that rainbows were different here and there. If they are, my guess is the explanation would be found in optics and, maybe bioelectric fields stuff? Here's a GREAT website for future reference and to put in your Favorites file.  Just click on any "circle" of science and follow the algorithm. Handy little tool. Can't wait to come back and read if someone has an explanation.\nhttp://hyperphysics.phy-astr.gsu.edu/hbase/hframe.html