Rainbows
Jarrod Malcolm Smith, St. Marys, KS Age: 9. Using: "colored pencils".
Sunlight looks white – but it’s really made up of different colors – red, orange, yellow, green, blue, indigo, and violet. The sun makes rainbows when white sunlight passes through rain drops. The raindrops act like tiny prisms – they bend the different colors in white light – so the light spreads out into a band of colors – which can be reflected back to you as a rainbow.
If you could get up high enough, you’d see that some rainbows continue below the horizon. That’s because – when the sun and rain combine to make a rainbow – they really make a full-circle rainbow. We can’t see all of the circle – because the horizon blocks it from view. Pilots high in the sky do sometimes report seeing genuine full-circle rainbows.
To see a rainbow, the sun has to be behind you – and the raindrops have to be in front of you . Also, next time you see a rainbow, turn around and notice the height of the sun in the sky. The lower the sun, the higher the top of the rainbow.
And remember – every person who sees a rainbow is looking at a different set of raindrops – from a slightly different perspective. So in a way, everybody sees their own personal rainbow!
