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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,

As with the prism, the first refraction separates the sunlight into its component colors,

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,

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.


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,

Gaping with my mouth open and people behind me honking,

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,

I ruled out that the flip-ups where giving double vision as I looked at lights the next day,

Can this possibly be? Could a source of polarized light be at a different angle,


Any suggestions! Please click [email protected]

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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