After the rain, you look up in the sky and there you see a beautiful rainbow. It looks like you can touch it, but the closer you get to it, the further it moves away.
The light is being bounced back from the water droplets (reflected) and the light is also bend (refracted) in order to form a rainbow.
The rainbow is not something you can touch - it is just the bending of light that gives the illusion that something is there.
A rainbow is in fact a full circle of light. However, due to most people viewing a rainbow on the ground we only see a semi-circle or arc of the rainbow.
If their are any water present, like rain and mist and fog and dew, you will be able to see a rainbow, but for each person the rainbow will look different, depending at the angle you look at it.
The rainbow is formed because white light is broken up into the different colours it consist of. White light is made up of 7 colours that we can see.
Sir Isaac Newton identified the 7 colors of the visible spectrum that together make up white light. All of which are present in a rainbow in the order red, orange, yellow, green, blue, indigo and violet (the acronym or name ROY G BIV is a good way to remember these colors and their order).
It does sometimes happen that we can see a rainbow at night, very light, but still there. This is called a moonbow.
Read here on how you can do an experiment to see your own rainbow.
Watch the video and then answer the questions.
- What does the boy see?
- What is a rainbow?
- Explain in your own words how a rainbow is formed.
- What determines the colour that comes out of the water droplet?
- Name the colours of the rainbow.
- Why do we only see half of the rainbow?
- Why can you not catch a rainbow?
You can either listen to the story or read it aloud to yourself. It is always good to practice some reading.
