Rainbow

The most charming example of chromatic dispersion is a rainbow. When white sunlight is intercepted by a drop of water in the atmosphere. Some of the light refracts into the drop, reflects from the drop's inner surface, and then refracts out of the drop. As with the prism, the first refraction separates the sunlight into its component colors, and the second refraction increases the separation. And the rainbow is there in the sky. This applet shows the physics of rainbow.



The black circle represents a drop of water in the atmosphere. Red light coming from the left.

You can click inside the colored block to change the color of the incoming light. Some reflects from the drop's inner surface, and refracts back to the atmosphere.(number 3) --> Rainbow. If your eyes intercept the separated colors from raindrops, the red you see comes from drops angled slightly higher in the sky than dose the blue.  You can see a circular arc of color, with red on top and blue on bottom.

Clicks inside the colored box to show this effect. You can drap one of the rain drop, Try it!

Did yo notice that the rainbow consists of partially polarized light?
The intensity of the light coming from ray3/ray4 verse viewing angle are also provided. There are two curves: Click ^ or v button to change its vertical scale.


This is an e-mail message from Neal Rasmussen (posted with his permission)

I am a tornado chaser for 20 years. About 4 years ago I was driving through a McDonald's drive thru. As it was just after a pretty good storm, I had mys polarized yellow tinted flip-up sunglasses on. Low and behold I almost dropped my cigarette into my lap. There off in the east was a double rainbow! Not the kind I've seen dozens of times where the second one is reveresed and much outside the primary, but this was immediatly INSIDE the primary!

Gaping with my mouth open and people behind me honking, I flipped my flip-ups up and the second inner one went away! I must have sat there for 2 minutes flipping my sunglasses. The colors were NOT reversed and it looked like one continuous double wide rainbow, with two complete sets of colors. I ruled out that the flip-ups where giving double vision as I looked at lights the next day, streetlights headlights, etc. and no doubles! Can this possibly be? Could a source of polarized light be at a different angle, perhaps the sun shining through a cirrus cloud or noctelucent (sp).



Email message:
Subject: circular rainbows
Date:     Fri, 4 Aug 2000 19:03:52 EDT
From:    Jrs3290@aol.com
To:        hwang@phy03.phy.ntnu.edu.tw
Hi, I am facinated by rainbows but am not smart enough to understand it all.
I do know that the most amazing one I have ever seen was when I was in a
small single engine aircraft above a layer of white clouds.  The cloud cover
was smooth and the sun made a shadow of my aircraft .  As I looked at the
shadow of the aircraft on the clouds I noticed it was encircled by a
circular rainbow. The rainbow followed until the cloud cover changed and then
disappeared.  Sincerly, Jim Spencer
My response:
I was always dreaming to be able to see the same view as you have seen (whenever  was on  an airplane).
What you have seen is a true rainbow. Circular rainbow can only be viewed from above the ground.
When we were on the ground, at least half of them were missing.
The viewing angle is about 42 degree.
Subject: Re: circular rainbows
Date:     Sat, 5 Aug 2000 10:47:47 EDT
From:    Jrs3290@aol.com
To:        hwang@phy03.phy.ntnu.edu.tw
Hi, yes you may use the letter any way you like.  If you do I wish you would
let me know so I can look at it.  The angle from where I was sitting in the
aircraft and the shadow was about 45 degrees as I remember it and I wonder if
the angle had been greater or less do you think I would still have seen a
rainbow or was I just fortunate that day to be at the right place at the
right time ??  Jim Spencer
Any suggestions! Please click hwang@phy03.phy.ntnu.edu.tw
My physics java applets

URLs link to this page

  1. http://www.geocities.com/SiliconValley/Lakes/3015/physicsRef.html
  2. http://www.fis.unipr.it/~coisson/fo/foweb.html
  3. http://cccsrv.trevano.ch/physics.html
  4. http://www-hermes.desy.de/erlangen/ws9697/rain.html
  5. http://www.phys.latech.edu/users/sawyer/phys202_webres.html
  6. http://www.physik.uni-regensburg.de/exlinks/ausbildung.html
  7. http://www.math.ku.dk:81/140_science.htm(NEED PASSWORD)
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