6 Fun Facts about Rainbows 🌈

Rainbows are caused when rays of sunlight pass through water droplets. Inside each water droplet, the light bends (refracts) and reflects off the inner surface of the droplet. Then, as the light exits the droplet, it bends again, which causes the light to spread out into its component colors, creating a spectrum of all the different colors of the rainbow. (Sunlight actually contains all the different colors, but when they're combined together - i.e. before they enter the water droplet - they appear white).

Here's some fun rainbow facts:

1. Rainbows are full circles! We usually only see part of the arc, but sometimes you can see the full circle from an airplane! (How much you see and where you see it also depends on where you're standing relative to the Sun.)

2. When there's a double rainbow, the second rainbow is reversed (this happens when the light is reflected twice within the water droplets).

3. Every rainbow is unique, because it depends on the position of the sun, the raindrops, and the specific angle of the person looking at the rainbow. This is why you can never actually reach the end of a rainbow.

4. It's rare, but rainbows can also appear at night! Night rainbows are called moonbows, and they're created from the reflected light from the moon (instead of sunlight). When they do appear, they're often fainter than a typical rainbow.

5. The longest-lasting rainbow recorded lasted 9 hours in Taiwan in 2017!

6. Rainbows are made up of 7 colors: Red, Orange, Yellow, Green, Blue, Indigo, and Violet. You can remember it as ROYGBIV.

If you want to read more, we highly recommend:

https://www.farmersalmanac.com/all-about-rainbows