The question
was, "How far away is a rainbow?" From the diagram, we see that, as
we face the image of the rainbow, it is 93,000,000 miles behind us.Return to my Physics pages
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© Copyright 1997, Jim Loy
The question
was, "How far away is a rainbow?" From the diagram, we see that, as
we face the image of the rainbow, it is 93,000,000 miles behind us.
This result is so counter-intuitive (except maybe to mathematicians and physicists), that it is instantly rejected by people, even before it enters their consciousness. If you were looking at the image of the sun (or anything else) in a mirror, and triangulated by the same method above, you would find that the actual image of the sun (not just the sun itself, but also its image) was behind you. It makes some sense with a mirror. Well, each rain drop is a little mirror, reflecting an image of the sun. Each rain drop also acts like a prism, to get the colors, and to move the image off to the side a little. [I'm working on this article. The mirror analogy is flawed]
Of course the rainbow shows the colors (top to bottom) red, orange, yellow, green, blue, indigo (a kind of blue violet), violet. Use the acronym "Roy G. Biv" to remember this (or Roy G. Bv, if you don't want to explain indigo). A fainter rainbow, with the colors reversed can often be seen outside the main rainbow. Further, fainter rainbows can sometimes be seen.
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