The Oneida Daily Dispatch (Oneida, NY)
Dazzling Rainbows
Have you ever looked up at the sky after it has rained and seen an arc of colors? Or perhaps on a hot summer day you’ve played in the sprinklers in your yard or held a garden hose toward the sun and seen a similar sight.
Rainbows have been seen as good omens for thousands of years. But what causes the beautiful strips of color in the sky? The Mini Page looks at rainbows this week.
Color
Rainbows happen when the sun strikes raindrops at a specific angle, which is about 42 degrees. You have to be standing in just the right spot with the sun shining just the right way to see a rainbow. They often look quite striking with storm clouds in the background.
The colors of the rainbow are commonly described and remembered by order with the made-up name ROY G. BIV (red, orange, yellow, green, blue, indigo and violet). But like a lot of things, people have different opinions about what colors make up a rainbow, so ROY
G. BIV is only used as a guide.
Double rainbow
Sometimes a rainbow forms above another rainbow, and this is called a double rainbow, which is rare. When this happens, the rainbow on the top is usually fainter, or lighter, in color. It has its colors reversed from the lower rainbow, so the top one has violet on the outer band instead of red.
Double rainbows occur when sunlight reflects twice through the same raindrop. You might be wondering how many raindrops are involved in the making of a single rainbow. The answer: trillions!
Just out of reach
Some people have looked for the end of a rainbow, and they find it to be just out of reach. This is because no matter where you move, the rainbow will always be the same distance from you. The light making up the rainbow isn’t an object set in one point in the sky. A rainbow is actually part of a circle, and circles have no end.