• Question: How are rainbows made?

    Asked by anon-182214 on 22 Jun 2018.
    • Photo: Laurent Dupays

      Laurent Dupays answered on 22 Jun 2018:


      That’s a good question! Rainbows happen when the sunlight and rain combine. The beams of sun separate into the colours we see in the rainbow when they meet a raindrop

    • Photo: Donna MacCallum

      Donna MacCallum answered on 22 Jun 2018:


      All to do with splitting white light up into constituent colours… have you put a beam of light through a prism to make a rainbow? Same thing happens in a raindrop (or lots of raindrops)

    • Photo: Ashley Akbari

      Ashley Akbari answered on 24 Jun 2018:


      A rainbow is a meteorological phenomenon that is caused by reflection, refraction and dispersion of light in water droplets resulting in a spectrum of light appearing in the sky. It takes the form of a multicoloured circular arc. Rainbows caused by sunlight always appear in the section of sky directly opposite the sun.

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