What A Rainbow Is?

In nature, man has wondered for long as to what makes a rainbow, a most strikingly beautiful sight. The great Greek philosopher, Aristotle, tried to explain the rainbow. He thought that a reflection of the sun’s rays by the rain appeared as a rainbow. It is not true.

Ordinary while sunlight is actually a mixture of all colours. We know, when light strikes a soap bubble or the bevelled edge of a mirror, it breaks into different colours, which are red, orange, yellow, green, blue and violet. The objects that break up light like this, are called prism, these colours emerge in the form of a band of stripes, each colour grading into the one next to it. This band is called a spectrum. A great curved spectrum or band of colours caused by disintegration of light, passing through the raindrops which act like prisms, is called a rainbow.

It is only during showers and the sun shining simultaneously that a rainbow is seen. One has to place himself in the middle with the sun at the back, facing the rain. In otherwise conditions, a rainbow cannot be seen. The sun shines over the shoulders into the raindrops, which break up. The sun, the eyes and the centre of the rainbow are must be in one straight line. It is not possible to make a straight line if the sun is too high in the sky. Rainbows can be seen only in the early morning or late afternoon. A morning rainbow means the east sun shining, with showers falling in the west and vice versa, for the afternoon rain-bow. In early times, it was a superstition that the souls went to heaven, over a rainbow bridge and the appearance of the rainbow was apprehended as fear of death for someone.