Physics of Rainbows Essay

Color is determined by the lengths of waves of light. Although there is no sure way to fully tell how we actually perceive color, there are two theories that seek to explain so. One is the trichromatic and the other opponent-process. Whereas one theory lacks in explaining a key problem the other succeeds, which is the case of the trichromatic theory and afterimages. Although the trichromatic theory does not explain the phenomenon of afterimages, of the two theories, the trichromatic one best explains how we see color.

When a beam of sunlight passes through a specially shaped glass object called a prism, the rays of different wavelengths are bent at different angles. The bending breaks up the sunlight into a beautiful band of colors. This band contains all the colors of the rainbow and is called the visible spectrum. At one end of the spectrum, the light appears as violet. It consists of the shortest wavelengths of light that we can see. Farther along the spectrum, the light has increasingly longer wavelengths. It appears as blue, green, yellow, orange, and red, each shading into its neighboring colors in the spectrum. The longest wavelengths of light that we can see appear deep red in color. Some descriptions of the spectrum also mention the color indigo, which is closely related to blue, between violet and blue.

The origin and history of this myth is mostly unknown, no one really knows how this story came to be and when, but people do know that this tale originated from the Ojibwe Nation and was retold by S. E. Schlosser. After that other tribes started to adopt the myth of how the rainbow was made, including my tribe the Tohono O’odham Nation. People also know that this tale is very old that’s one of the reasons why no one knows when it was created because it was so long ago.

“Those colors are from sulfur and iron oxide mainly,” Norval said, revealing more of his encyclopedic knowledge of Gnaritus’ geology. “There are many colorful rainbows on Gnaritus not only in the sky but also on the land!”

Precipitation Depending on the temperature, season, type of cloud, and other conditions, precipitation occurs when the water that has evaporated becomes so heavy the clouds cannot hold it anymore and it falls back to earth as rain, hail, sleet, or snow (The Water Cycle, 2009; Wilkinson, 2007).

A rainbow is caused by the 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 multicolored arc; Rainbows caused by sunlight always appear in the side of sky directly opposite the sun. A primary rainbow the arc shows red on the outer part and violet on the inner part.

Being able to see color is one of the things that make humans special but sometimes color can deceive us. Humans perceive color based upon the lighting and other colors around whatever the object they are looking at is. For example an apple can be seen as bright red if the colors around it are lighter or the light is hitting it straight on but the same apple can be seen as dark red if the colors behind it are darker or the light source is not focused on it

comes to a person’s skin color but they see all colors such as the grass, sky, rainbow etc. It

Title: Dilution Abstract: As the wavelength is increased absorbance will start at low and get higher before curving to low numbers again, while transmittance will go from high numbers to low number and curve back to high numbers. This was tested by placing a sample in a spectrometer and changing the wavelength. The absorbance and transmittance were recorded for each wavelength change.

“About 300 years ago, Sir Isaac Newton saw beam of sunlight through a glass prism. He discovered that light is made up of a spectrum of seven distinct visible colors” (University of Manitoba). Thus known as red, orange, yellow, green, blue, indigo, violet, or roygbiv. These colors come about when electrons jump down from a higher energy level. To do this, a specific amount of energy is absorbed by an specific atom, causing its electrons to jump from ground state to higher energy levels.

Do they not see the way sky turns grey on cloudy days, or how a rainbow peaks out when it rains a bit

Humans have three cone cells that are extremely sensitive to Red, (620-700nm), Green (490-570nm) and Blue (450-495nm) wavelengths of light. Although these three cones are most sensitive to these wavelengths, they are still sensitive to the remaining wavelengths of visible light between 400-700nm. When a light with a wavelength of 600nm is transmitted through the retina, the Red and Green cones capture, sense and signal the brain that orange light is observed. In this case the Red and Green cones absorb light but the Green cones are less sensitive. Also, the Blue cones don’t absorb much light and are not sensitive

A debated topic that I did not include in my analysis included avian visual models. Birds have been shown to see in ultraviolet light (300-400nm), which humans are blind to (Cuthill et al. 2000). Birds have four cone types, while humans only have three, and so likely see the intensity of colours differently (Chen & Goldsmith, 1986; Goldsmith, 1991). They also have light-absorbing oil droplets in their cone cells, which is likely to reduce the overlap between cone sensitivities (Bowmaker et al. 1997; Vorobyev, 2003). From this, studies have found that there are two types of colour vision in birds, VS and UVS. Both vision models see in ultraviolet light, however UVS sees more towards the shorter wavelengths while VS sees towards the longer

The amount of refraction on the lens depends on the wavelength so different wavelengths focus at slightly different places. This is chromatic aberration, a problem where a rainbow halo appears around images.

In a modern building daylight can provide most of our lighting needs for the vast majority of the working day. It is therefore unnecessary to spend too much time in designing artificial lighting systems.