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Asked by zoesacheesyunicorn to Angela, Gabriele, Karen, Maria, Shane on 11 Nov 2013. This question was also asked by jessiemooney.
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Karen McCarthy answered on 11 Nov 2013:
Given all the rain we’re having lately, rainbows are a plenty at the moment. Rainbows happen because of 2 factors ; rain and light. Light from the sky, like all light, is made up of seven different colour wavelengths (same as the colours in the rainbow). Normally to our eye, light just looks white, but when it’s been raining, because of the angle of the light hitting the raindrops, the light gets magnified and separated by the raindrops. Each raindrop magnifies a different colour from lights, which means when its raining (lots of raindrops), we can see all the different colours within light, which looks like a rainbow.
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Shane Mc Guinness answered on 11 Nov 2013:
Amazing question: Basically light from the sun is “white” light. It’s a mix of all the colours we can see (and a lot of those that we can’t!). Each “wavelength” of light has slightly different properties. So when something is able to split all these different types of light we can see them individually. Raindrops do this really well by “refracting” the mix of light and stretching it out into its seperate parts. How does it do this!? Think about a car driving along the road beside the beach. Then the two wheels on the left side start driving on the sand. Because the sand is denser, the wheels travel slower on that side so the car turns! That’s exactly what happens with the light. Because the water of rain drops in the air is higher than air itself, the light bends and splits, like the pages of a book when you bend the book.
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Angela Stevenson answered on 11 Nov 2013:
Rainbows happen when sunlight and rain combine in a very specific way. The beams of sunlight separate into the colors (rainbow) as they hit raindrops at a very specific angle. That’s why you often see a rainbow after rain. The sun is always behind you and the rain in front of you when a rainbow appears, so the center of the rainbow’s arc is directly opposite the sun! cool hey 🙂
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Gabriele De Chiara answered on 11 Nov 2013:
Hello, just wanted to add that sometimes, especially here in Ireland, you can see the second rainbow! If you look carefully enough there is a second and bigger rainbow with the colours that are inverted in order with respect to the previous one. Here in Ireland it is very common, back in Italy it was not so easy to observe:
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