Although light looks colorless, it’s made up of many colors-red, orange, yellow, green, blue, indigo and violet. These colors are known as the spectrum. When light shines into water, the rays of light refract, or bend, at different angles. Different colors bend at different angles--red bends the least and violet the most. When light passes through a raindrop at a certain angle, the rays separate into the colors of the spectrum-and you see a beautiful rainbow.

Published on Mar 18, 2012

A demonstration of how light passes through and round a raindrop by a combination of refraction and reflection, the slight difference in refractive index for different light colours and the consequence in terms of the rainbow seen in the sky.

Category
    Science & Technology 
License
    Standard YouTube License 

Published on May 14, 2014

SciShow explains how three important ingredients -- sunlight, water, and you -- interact to create the illusion of a rainbow. The colorful details are inside!

Like SciShow? Want to help support us, and also get things to put on your walls, cover your torso and hold your liquids? Check out our awesome products over at DFTBA Records: http://dftba.com/artist/52/SciShow

Or help support us by subscribing to our page on Subbable: https://subbable.com/scishow