๐ Make Your Own Rainbow
Rainbows only appear when the Sun is behind you and fairly low โ roughly 5ยฐ to 45ยฐ up.
Inside a single raindrop
Light bends entering the drop (refraction), bounces off the back wall (reflection), then bends again on exit โ splitting into the rainbow's colors.
Rainbows
A rainbow forms when sunlight passes through millions of tiny raindrops in the air. Each raindrop acts like a little prism, splitting white sunlight into all its colors!
โก Fun Fact:Inside a raindrop, light first bends (refracts) as it enters, then bounces off the back inside wall of the drop (reflects), and bends again (refracts) as it exits โ splitting into red, orange, yellow, green, blue, and violet!
Every color of light bends by a slightly different amount, which is why they spread apart into separate bands instead of staying mixed together as white light.
๐ Example:To see a rainbow, the Sun needs to be behind you and low in the sky, with rain falling in front of you โ that's why rainbows often appear after a rain shower, opposite the Sun!
๐ก Tip:Sometimes you can spot a fainter second rainbow outside the first one โ it's called a secondary rainbow, and its colors are flipped upside down because the light bounced twice inside the raindrops!