Rainbow - this magnificent colorful phenomenon has long captured the imagination of people. Looking at a rainbow, you want to believe in miracles and magic. Which natural phenomenon can compare in beauty with a rainbow? The appearance of a rainbow in the sky means that good weather will soon come and the bad weather will end. There are many legends about the rainbow, which you will learn about from this article. We will also try to understand in more detail the reasons for the appearance of this wonderful natural phenomenon and learn about interesting facts about the rainbow. Read the article, ask questions and share your impressions in the comments.

In the ancient Indian epic “Romayana” we find the expression “the seven-colored bow of the Thunderer.” Thunderer is the supreme god, the king of kings Indra. The ancient Greeks saw the rainbow as a mediator between heaven and earth, that is, between gods and people. They identified the rainbow with the beautiful Iris and depicted her dressed in silk, which intersected with all seven colors. Iris's indispensable attribute was golden wings. They symbolized her fickle nature: after all, a rainbow always appears and disappears unexpectedly.

The Arabs believed that the rainbow was the bow of the god of light Kuzakh. After a grueling struggle with the forces of darkness that sought to prevent the sun from appearing in the sky, Kuzakh invariably emerged victorious and hung a rainbow bow on the clouds. Since ancient times, the Slavs considered a rainbow after heavy rain to be a harbinger of the victory won by the god Perun over the spirit of evil.

Thunder and lightning alone are not enough to create a rainbow. If the sky is overcast and there is no shadow on the ground, you cannot see the rainbow. And only when the sun breaks through the layers of clouds are the conditions created for its appearance. Beautiful! Changeable and elusive!

Explaining the appearance of a rainbow in the sky from a theoretical point of view is not particularly difficult. This is elementary optics. How do rain and sun draw a rainbow!?

As you know, light consists of a combination of several colors: red, orange, yellow, green, blue, cyan and violet. White light passing through the prism is reflected on the other side with all the colors of the rainbow. But in order to understand what a rainbow is, you need to understand what happens inside the prism and how white light emits so many colors.

A prism is a trihedron, usually made of transparent glass or plastic. The prism “draws” a mini-rainbow by decomposing complex light into a spectrum when a narrow strip of white light hits one of the faces of the triangle. The scattering of light in a prism occurs due to the so-called “refractive index” of the glass. Each material has its own distinctive refractive index. When light passes through a material (such as light traveling through air and striking a glass prism), the difference in refractive indices between the air and the glass causes the light to bend. The bending angle is different from the wavelength of the light. And as white light passes through the two planes of the prism, different colors bend (refract) and something like a rainbow appears. The rainbow itself is created by raindrops acting as tiny prisms. Light enters a raindrop, reflects off the other side of the raindrop, and exits. During this process, light is decomposed into a spectrum, just as it happens in a transparent triangular prism. The angle between the incoming light beam and the outgoing light beam is 42 degrees for red and 40 degrees for violet. Due to the difference in bending angles, a rounded rim appears on the sky, i.e. rainbow. Sometimes two rainbows may appear at once. A second rainbow can form because some raindrops can be reflected twice at once. In order for two reflections to occur simultaneously, droplets of a certain size are needed. The basic process of creating a rainbow is the refraction (refraction) or “bending” of light. Light bends, or rather changes its direction, when it moves from one environment to another. Rainbows occur because light travels at different speeds in different environments.

So, the bend of a ray of light falls into a transparent prism. One side of the light wave is slightly slower than the other, so the beam passes through the air-glass interface at a different angle (essentially the beam of light is reflected from the surface of the prism). The light turns again when it leaves the prism because one side of the light is moving faster than the other. In addition to the process of bending light itself, the prism separates white light into its component colors. Each color of white light has its own characteristic frequency, causing the colors to travel at different speeds as they pass through the prism.

The color that is slowly refracted in the glass bends more when it gets from the air into the prism, because in different environments color moves at different speeds. The color moving faster in the glass does not weaken significantly, so it does not bend as much. Due to this, all the colors of the rainbow that make up white light are separated by frequency when passing through the glass. If glass refracts light twice, as a prism does, a person can see all the separated colors of white light much better. This is called scattering. Raindrops can refract and scatter light just as they do inside a prism. Under certain conditions, as a result of such refraction of light, a rainbow appears in the sky. Each drop is unique: the drop has a completely different size and consistency compared to a glass prism. When white sunlight penetrates a few raindrops at a certain angle, red, orange, yellow, green, blue, indigo and violet colors appear in the sky, i.e. rainbow. The colors of the visible light spectrum are red and violet at the end of the rainbow.

As light passes through air into a drop of water, the constituent colors of white light begin to scatter, with the speed of each color depending on their frequency. The violet color reflected in the drop is refracted at an obtuse angle, and the red color at an acute angle. On the right side of the drop, some light escapes into the air, and the rest is reflected back. Some reflected light comes out from the left side of the drop, and refraction occurs again as the light moves toward the air.

Thus, each drop scatters white sunlight into its component colors. But why do we see wide bands of color, as if each rainy area is scattering only one specific color? This is because we only see the color that comes from each drop. When, for example, drop A scatters white light, at a certain angle only one red light comes out, visible to our eye. Other color rays are refracted at a different angle, so we don't see them. Sunlight penetrates the falling drops equally, so all the nearest drops emit red light. The speed of drop B across the sky is slightly lower, so it will no longer be able to emit red light. But since all other colors have a smaller wavelength, drop B in this case will emit orange and all other colors of the rainbow in descending order. The last color to close the rainbow is violet with the smallest wave of glow. If you look at a rainbow from above, you can see a whole circle consisting of seven thin circles of different colors. From the ground, we can only see the arch of the rainbow appearing on the horizon. Sometimes two rainbows appear in the sky at once, one of which has a clear outline, while the other looks like a blurry reflection of the first. A faint rainbow is formed according to the same principle as a clear one, but in this case the light is reflected from the surface inside the drop not once, but twice. As a result of this double reflection, the light comes out of the drop at a different angle, so the second rainbow appears slightly taller. If you look closely, you will notice that the colors in the second rainbow are reflected in the opposite order compared to the first rainbow. As a result of such refraction of light and scattering of rays, a rainbow appears. The sunlight and water that are familiar to us together create a new work of art, given to us by Mother Nature.

Brilliant with bright, magnificent colors, the rainbow amazed the poetic imagination of primitive peoples. It either stretches above the ground, or sparkles in the very garden of Iria, where birds of paradise and winged souls rest on it.

The rainbow was recognized as having a special, divine character, like all luminaries, therefore, just like in nature, the rainbow is on the verge between a thunderstorm and sunlight, and in folk tales it is in connection with the god of thunder and lightning Perun and the light goddess Lada, one of whose names, by the way, is Perunitsa the Thunderer. In legends, the rainbow is compared to a wide variety of objects.

Since ancient times, the Slavs have believed that the rainbow “drinks” water from lakes, rivers and seas: like a snake, dipping its sting into the water, it draws water into itself, and then releases it, which is why it rains; At the ends of the rainbow a pot of ancient gold coins is hung. The legend depicts three deities, one of whom holds a rainbow and raises water from the river with it, another creates clouds from this water, and the third, breaking them, causes rain. This is like a triune embodiment of Perun.

The Western Slavs have a belief that a witch can steal a rainbow and hide it, which means causing a drought on the earth.

There are also such beliefs: a rainbow is a bridge between heaven and earth; or the belt of the goddess Lada; or the path to the next world, along it the souls of the dead sometimes come to the sinful earth. This is a symbol of abundance, and if the rainbow does not appear for a long time, one should expect famine and crop failure.

In some places they believed that the rainbow was a shiny rocker with the help of which Lada Perunitsa draws water from the sea-ocean, and then irrigates fields and fields with it. This wonderful rocker is kept in the sky, and at night - in the constellation Ursa Major. Riddles about the rainbow also retained its likeness to a rocker and buckets of water: “Two seas hang on an arc,” “A multi-colored rocker hangs over a river.”

Serbs, Macedonians, Bulgarians and Western Ukrainians believe that those who pass under the rainbow change their gender. In western Bulgaria they believed that “if someone wants to change his gender, he must go to the river during the rain and where the rainbow “drinks water”, in the same place he must drink, and then he will turn from a man into a woman and from a woman to a man." This property of the rainbow can be used to magically change the gender of the unborn child. "If a woman who has given birth to only girls goes to drink water in the place where the rainbow “drinks,” then after that she will have boys will be born."

In Bulgaria, there is also the idea that the rainbow is “the belt of the Lord, which he rinses during the rain or dries after the rain.” At the same time, the rainbow is also called the “samovil belt.” Serbs and Croats say that God uses the rainbow to show women how to weave and what colors to use.

In Ancient India, a rainbow is the bow of Indra, the thunder god; in addition, in Hinduism and Buddhism, the “rainbow body” is the highest yogic state attainable in the realm of samsara.

In Islam, the rainbow consists of four colors - red, yellow, green and blue, corresponding to the four elements. In some African myths, a celestial serpent is identified with a rainbow, which serves as a guardian of treasures or envelops the Earth in a ring. American Indians identify the rainbow with a ladder along which one can climb to another world. Among the Incas, the rainbow was associated with the sacred Sun, and the Inca rulers wore its image on their coats of arms and emblems. Among the Chibcha-Muisca Indians, the rainbow was considered a good deity. In the specific mountain conditions of the Cordillera, an amazing a natural phenomenon: against the background of a foggy haze, a rainbow sometimes appears, as if framing a many times enlarged reflection of the observer himself. The main sanctuary dedicated to the goddess of the Rainbow, Chibcha, was erected next to the Tekendama mountain waterfall, where the brightest arc always lights up as soon as the rays of the sun hit the water splashes. In Scandinavian mythology, "Bivrest" ("shaking road", "trembling path") is a rainbow bridge connecting heaven and earth. He is guarded by the guardian of the gods, Heimdall. Before the end of the world and the death of the gods, the bridge collapses. In Ancient Greece, the goddess of the rainbow was the virgin Iris, the messenger of the gods, the daughter of Thaumantes and the oceanids Electra, the sister of the harpies. She was depicted with wings and a caduceus. Her robe is made up of dew drops shimmering with the colors of the rainbow. According to the ancients, the rainbow connected heaven and earth, therefore, with the development of Olympic mythology, Iris was considered a mediator between gods and people. Unlike Hermes, Iris carried out the orders of Zeus and Hera without showing her own initiative. The canonical image of Iris is a winged maiden (usually sitting next to Hera), holding a vessel of water, with which she delivered water to the clouds.

According to the Bible, the rainbow was created by God after the great flood, as a sign of his promise to never send a flood to people again. In the Talmudic tradition, the rainbow was created by God on the sixth day of creation. For the Greeks, the rainbow is a manifestation of the goddess Iris. In medieval Christian depictions of Christ on the day Last Judgment is seated on a rainbow. The rainbow is also associated with the Virgin Mary, the mediator between God and people. The symbolism of the rainbow depends on the number of colors in it.
So in China, there are five colors in the rainbow, the combination of which represents the unity of ying and yang. Based on the Aristotelian triad, the Christian West sees in it only three (symbol of the Trinity) primary colors: blue (the heavenly nature of Christ), red (the passion of Christ) and green (the mission of Christ on earth).
The rainbow is an image of peaceful heavenly fire, in contrast to lightning as an expression of the wrath of heavenly forces. The appearance of a rainbow after a thunderstorm, against the backdrop of peaceful nature, together with the sun, made it possible to interpret it as a symbol of peace. In the Bible, the rainbow appears (in the episode with Noah's Ark) as a sign that the water will no longer flood; in general it is seen as a symbol of the covenant made between Yahweh and people. The hemisphere of the rainbow was considered a sphere (the other half of which is supposedly immersed in the ocean), which
emphasized the divine perfection of this natural phenomenon. According to a common interpretation, the red color of the rainbow represents the wrath of God, yellow - generosity, green - hope, blue - pacification of natural forces, purple - greatness.

In the sky the rainbow shines and sparkles,
It’s as if the passage through it is open to us.
A multi-colored ray descended from the sky,
The forest shines in the beautiful rainbow dust.

The foliage shimmers like emerald,
Reflections of the rainbow are visible here and there,
The forest plunged into a fairy tale and fell silent,
He wants to hold on to the wonderful moment.

Science has long explained everything to us,
But it is not possible to fully understand nature.
Seeing a rainbow in the blue sky,
We dream that these are symbols from the outside.

Delight takes us into a sky-high flight,
Perhaps the answer to a miracle awaits there.
The rainbow is shining for us, fresh and good,
The bright colors make your eyes glow with happiness.

February 17, 2013 at 15:39:17| Categories: Nature , Photo , Other

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Rainbow is one of the most amazing natural phenomena. What is a rainbow? How does it appear? These questions have interested people at all times. Even Aristotle tried to unravel its secret. There are many beliefs and legends associated with it (the road to the next world, the connection between heaven and earth, a symbol of abundance, etc.). Some peoples believed that whoever passes under the rainbow will change their gender.

Her beauty amazes and delights. Looking at this multi-colored “magic bridge”, you want to believe in miracles. The appearance of a rainbow in the sky notifies that the bad weather is over and the clear sunny season has arrived.

When does a rainbow happen? It can be observed during rain or after a downpour. But lightning and thunder are not enough for it to occur. It appears only when the sun breaks through the clouds. Certain conditions are needed for it to be noticed. You need to be between the rain (it should be in front) and the sun (it should be behind). Your eyes, the center of the rainbow and the sun must be on the same line, otherwise you will not see this magical bridge!

Surely many have noticed what happens when a ray falls on a soap bubble or on the edge of a beveled mirror. It comes in a variety of colors (green, blue, red, yellow, purple, etc.). The object that splits the beam into its component colors is called a prism. And the resulting multi-colored line is a spectrum.

So what this is is a curved spectrum, a band of color formed as a result of the splitting of a beam of light when passing through raindrops (which in this case are a prism).

The colors of the solar spectrum are arranged in a certain order. On one side - red, then orange, next to it - yellow, green, blue, indigo, violet. The rainbow is clearly visible as long as the raindrops fall evenly and frequently. The more often, the brighter it is. Thus, three processes occur simultaneously in a raindrop: refraction, reflection and decomposition of light.

Where to see a rainbow? Near fountains, waterfalls, against the background of drops, splashes, etc. Its location in the sky depends on the position of the sun. You can admire the entire rainbow circle if you are high in the sky. The higher the sun rises above the horizon, the smaller the colored semicircle becomes.

The first attempt to explain what a rainbow is was made in 1611 by Antonio Dominis. His explanation was different from the biblical one, so he was sentenced to death. In 1637, Descartes gave a scientific phenomenon based on the refraction and reflection of sunlight. At that time, they did not yet know about the decomposition of the beam into a spectrum, that is, dispersion. That's why Descartes' rainbow turned out to be white. 30 years later, Newton “colored” it, supplementing his colleague’s theory with explanations for the refraction of colored rays in raindrops. Despite the fact that the theory is more than 300 years old, it correctly formulates what a rainbow is and its main features (arrangement of colors, position of arcs, angular parameters).

It’s amazing how the light and water that are familiar to us create together a completely new, unimaginable beauty, a work of art given to us by nature. A rainbow always evokes a surge of emotions and remains in the memory for a long time.

A colored rainbow does not exist because it is just an illusion that only appears to us. As far as scientists know, not a single living creature in the world except humans is able to see it. And yet it exists.

It is seen by people living on one side or another globe, on islands or continents, on the ground or flying in the air. A bright, colorful rainbow appears before the eyes of enthusiastic spectators, when small drops of rain are still falling on the ground, and the sun is behind them - and creates an amazing picture, giving everyone joy. That’s why they called it that way – a rainbow.

Since ancient times, humanity has been thinking about the nature of this phenomenon and why rainbows and rain are so connected with each other. Therefore, it is not surprising that a huge number of different stories and legends are associated with it, most of which are extremely optimistic.

In the Old Testament. God gave people this amazing phenomenon as a symbol of the inviolability of His Word. And He promised Noah and his family that people would never see a global flood again.

For the ancient Greeks. According to ancient Greek myths, the messenger of the gods, Iris, descended to people along a rainbow from heaven to earth.

Among the ancient Chinese. For the Chinese, the rainbow was a heavenly dragon, which meant the unity of Heaven and Earth.

Among the ancient Slavs. Our ancestors believed that this amazing phenomenon serves as a magical bridge. Angels descend along it, collect water from the rivers, and then pour it into the clouds - after which they irrigate everything around with life-giving rain. Here, rainbows and rain are closely interrelated.

Rainbow for the superstitious. It is interesting that not everyone thought that the appearance of this amazing natural phenomenon was good. Some believed that the appearance of a rainbow brings bad luck. If only because through it the souls of dead people pass into the kingdom of the dead, which means its appearance signals someone’s imminent death.

Rainbow and folk signs. Naturally, folk superstitions also could not ignore this atmospheric phenomenon - people, focusing on it, tried to predict the weather. For example, if the rainbow was located high and was more curved, it means that the weather will be good, but if the multi-colored arc was located low and turned out to be stretched, you can prepare for bad weather.

What an enchanting sight it is

It will be interesting to know that this amazing phenomenon can be observed not only during the day, but also at night, in cirrus clouds and even during fog. At the same time, from the ground it appears to us in the form of an arch. And it can be seen in its entirety only when, at the time of its appearance, we are in an airplane, helicopter, airplane or on a high, high mountain.

Then it turns out that in fact the rainbow has absolutely round shape, since the earth’s surface completely prevents you from seeing it. And all because a drop, having a spherical shape and illuminated by a beam of parallel sunlight, can only create a circle.

Solar

The solar rainbow is the brightest of them all and it is the one we see most often. It consists of a huge number of flowers. It is quite easy to remember the main shades of this phenomenon, since many poems and sayings were invented specifically for this purpose, in the first letters of which the colors of the rainbow are encrypted:

1. Each is Red (primary, it cannot be obtained by mixing colors);
2. Hunter - Orange (optional - can be obtained by mixing primary colors);
3. Desires – Yellow (main);
4. Noble – Green (optional);
5. Where – Blue (optional);
6. Sitting – Blue (primary);
7. Pheasant – Purple (optional).

Despite the fact that we believe that we see only these seven colors of the rainbow, in fact, the spectrum is absolutely continuous - and our eye distinguishes more than one hundred and fifty shades. And all because there is no clear line between these colors - and the same color (white) smoothly passes into another through all shades.

Lunar

Theoretically, lunar rainbows can be seen everywhere. But in practice, it is most often observed by residents of rainy areas or those living near large waterfalls.

It is not as bright as the sun; you can see it on the opposite side of the sky from the Moon during the full moon (give or take a few nights).

The night star should be low above the horizon, the sky should be almost black and, of course, it should be drizzling on the other side of the Moon. There are even parallels: rain and rainbow (if it rains, then it is quite likely to see a rainbow), rainbow and rain (if a rainbow appears, then the weather may change).

The colors of the lunar rainbow are not easy to see - its light is too weak for our eyes. Therefore, if we are lucky enough to notice it with our eyes unaided by the latest technology, we will only see a white arc.

Foggy

Sometimes a mist rainbow is confused with a lunar rainbow because it usually looks like a bright, shining, wide white arch. It may be slightly purple on the inside and orange on the outside.

It can be seen when the sun's rays find themselves in a faint fog, which consists of tiny water droplets (25 microns) that refract and scatter white light. The smaller they are, the whiter the rainbow, since the light beams in this case mix, first become faded, and then become completely discolored.

Fiery

A fire rainbow is an extremely rare phenomenon. It is absolutely horizontal and looks out from under the cirrus clouds, which are located at a huge altitude - 8-9 km above sea level.

It can only be observed from the ground, while the daylight must be at an angle exceeding 58°, and cirrus clouds, which consist of hexagonal ice crystals and are horizontal at this moment (so that the rays of the Sun can be freely refracted), must be floating in the sky.

Inverted

An inverted rainbow is an equally rare natural phenomenon. Cirrus clouds are also needed for its appearance. Only the ice crystals must line up at the right degree so that the sun's white rays can decompose into different colors and be reflected in the sky.

Appearance

A bright, multi-colored arch usually appears either before or after rain, since rainbows and rain are associated with each other. In this case, the sun's (moon's) rays must penetrate through the clouds, the luminary is behind the person's back, and the drizzling rain is in front. If a rainbow appears in the morning or evening (when the Sun is not far from the horizon), then it will be large, if during the day (the sun is high) it will be small.

Why exactly this natural phenomenon occurs was first explained by Descartes at the beginning of the 17th century. In his time, they still knew nothing about the fact that white could disintegrate into different colors. Because of this, the scientist’s rainbow turned out to be snow-white.

Newton colored it, discovering dispersion and explaining this natural process.

Briefly speaking about this phenomenon, it can be explained as an optical phenomenon that occurs when the rays of the heavenly body are refracted and reflected in a huge number (often reaching a million) of raindrops, and then rain and rainbows are visible to the human eye.

1. White rays pass through rain (or fog) drops.
2. Each droplet is a kind of prism (a body made of a transparent substance, bounded by two non-parallel planes, due to which light is refracted).
3. This prism has excellent optical properties, so it successfully splits white light into the colors of which it consists, thereby forming a beam of diverging multi-colored rays. Thus, it can be argued that each individual drop of water is a kind of small rainbow.
4. Multi-colored rays emerge from the prism at different angles (here it is worth remembering that the surface of the drop is curved). For example, the angle of red is 137°30’, purple is 139°20’, and the rest are in between. The color is also affected by the wavelength of light - red has the longest wavelength, violet has the shortest.
5. As a result of this, the white color, which contains absolutely all colors except black, completely disintegrates and forms a multi-colored stripe.
6. Quite often, near one rainbow you can often notice a second one, or even several, although not as bright as the main one. These are secondary rainbows, which can be seen when the light in one droplet is reflected twice. The colors in such arches are placed in reverse - purple on top, red in the middle.

If someone is constantly unlucky and almost never gets to see this natural phenomenon with their own eyes, you shouldn’t despair, because everyone can easily create a rainbow on their own. This is where the question arises: how to make a rainbow.

Option 1. The simplest

Take a glass prism, a sheet of white paper and go out into the Sun. Turn your back to it and place the prism so that the light falls through it onto the sheet. Rainbow is ready! By bringing the prism closer and further away from the paper, you can increase or decrease the multi-colored miracle.

Option 2. With water-1

In this case, the prism will be a glass of water, three-quarters full. Then you need to act as in the first option. The result is rain and rainbows.

Option 2. With water-2

Take a bowl, fill it with water, find White list papers and a small mirror. Place the bowl in the sun, lower the mirror into the water, lean it against the edge of the dish and turn it so that the light rays fall on it. After this, you need to move a sheet of paper along the bowl in search of a place where a rainbow will be displayed on it.

Option 3. With CD

It is quite possible to see a rainbow using a disk. This is due to the fact that its surface has a huge number of grooves that act as small prisms.

You need to go to a lit window, close it with a curtain so that there is a small gap for light rays. Take the disk and place it so that sunlight hits it, after which you need to reflect the beam using the disk onto the cardboard. If you tilt the disk in different directions, you can get both a rainbow stripe and a circular rainbow. If you use a flashlight instead of the Sun, the colors of the rainbow will appear less saturated.

Option 4. For extreme sports enthusiasts who like to quarrel with neighbors and make repairs

This experiment will feature both rainbows and rain. In the largest room, install a 500-watt flashlight and turn it on. Take a garden hose, run water to the lantern, attach a garden watering gun to the hose and set it to spray. Turn on the water, then move the gun closer to the lantern, but do not flood it. In a few minutes you will have not only rainbows and rain, but spectators - neighbors from below, who will definitely appreciate your resourcefulness!

When you look at a rainbow, it enchants with its amazing, mysterious appearance. A multi-colored bridge along the sky seems fantastic, unreal, making you believe in a fairy tale. Looking at this miracle of nature, which always appears suddenly, we freeze in silent admiration.

This interesting natural phenomenon is not very often observed in the sky. It occurs when it rains and the sun shines at the same time. In this case, you need to stand with your back to the sun and your face to the rain.

A rainbow can also be seen in a drop of water when the sun shines on it at a certain angle. This beautiful phenomenon can be recreated. The easiest way to get a rainbow is with sunlight. To carry out the experiment you will need the following items: a container of water, a sheet of white paper, a mirror, a flashlight. The refraction of light in water breaks it up into colors and reflects them on a white sheet. As a result, we observe a spectrum - bands of red, orange, yellow, green, blue, indigo and purple flowers. There are only seven of them and they are called the main ones. In reality, they are replaced by thousands of shades, they are continuous and smoothly transition from one to another.

You can make a rainbow without using sunlight, that is, in the dark. But then the color spectrum looks less bright. To demonstrate the appearance of a rainbow, it is enough to limit yourself to one object - a CD. In this case, even water is not required. If you change the angle of the CD, very beautiful effects arise. You can get either a rainbow stripe or a whole circle.

Essay-reasoning about a rainbow

It is loving and fun to look at a rainbow. When gloomy, stormy weather gives way to sunny weather, and a bright multi-colored bridge appears before your eyes, both young and old rejoice. It’s not for nothing that in Ukrainian the rainbow is called “veselka”. Sometimes you can notice two or more multi-colored arcs that are observed against the background of a cloud if it is located opposite the sun. In this case, we see red from the outside of the rainbow, and violet from the inside.

The image of the rainbow is widely reflected in oral folk art, literature, poetry and painting. Many songs, poems, riddles and proverbs are dedicated to this delightful optical phenomenon. And how many folk signs and superstitions are associated with it! Here are just a few of them, the most favorable and promising. Whoever passes under the rainbow, his life will renew its colors, become brighter, more saturated. A rainbow resting its ends on the ground indicates places where there will be a good harvest or hidden treasures - a “pot of gold.” The water from which the multi-colored semicircle “grows” has healing properties. She will give a long-awaited child to a woman who was considered infertile, and recovery to a seriously ill person. A person who sees a rainbow in winter will certainly be very happy, since luck will accompany him in all his endeavors.

Not only in Ancient Egypt, but also among the ancient Aryans-Proto-Slavs the sun god was called Ra. According to legend, he carried the sun to the vault of heaven on his chariot. Perhaps this is where the name of the rainbow came from - the arc of the god Ra. In many cultures, this phenomenon serves as a symbol of transfiguration, heavenly glory, the throne of God, the border between worlds. According to the Bible, this bridge between heaven and earth was created by God as a sign of God's promise to never again send a flood to people, as well as a symbol of forgiveness for humanity.

In conditions modern city It’s quite rare to come across a seven-colored heavenly path on your way. So let's believe in the joy and beauty given by nature itself - in the rainbow! If you are lucky enough to witness this amazing spectacle, rejoice at it with all your heart and admire it to your heart's content.

Ankudinova Valeria

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Ministry of General and Vocational Education

Sverdlovsk region

Municipal state educational institution

"Verkhnedubrovsk secondary school"

A wonderful natural phenomenon - a rainbow-arc

abstract

Performer: Valeria Ankudinova, 3rd grade student,

Head: Malykh E.I., teacher primary classes first quarter categories

Verkhneye Dubrovo, 2013

Introduction

Rainbow is one of the most beautiful natural phenomena. I once heard a fairy tale and it said that where the rainbow ends there is treasure. Many tried to find them, but to no avail.

Among the brightest natural phenomena, the rainbow is one of the most beautiful.What natural phenomenon can be compared in beauty to a rainbow? The aurora is possible, but not many people have seen it.The thunderstorm passes, and a rainbow flashes in the sky. Sometimes you can see two rainbows at once. The second, as a rule, is much paler than the first, and the colors in it are in the reverse order.She is so beautiful that she is sung in many songs, described in literature, and legends are made about her. Many people, like me, look forward to the rain so they can admire the rainbow.

Adults don't perceive rainbows the same way children do. For children, a rainbow is magic, and for adults it is memories of childhood and joy.

Then I decided to find out the whole history of the origin of the rainbow.

What kind of multi-colored miracle of nature is this? How is a rainbow formed? Is it possible to observe this beauty at home? What other rainbows are there?

These questions interested me. And this topic became interesting to me because not many people know how a rainbow is formed. To answer all the questions that arose, I decided to conduct research.

By exploring this mystery of nature, I will be able to give an accurate answer to the questions I have posed.

Target my job: to find out the reason for the appearance of a rainbow.

Delivered by me tasks :

1. Find out who colored the rainbow.
2. Learn the history of the study of rainbows.

Object of studyis a natural phenomenon of the rainbow.

Subject of study– the concept of “rainbow” as a natural phenomenon.

What is a rainbow?

There are several versions of where the word rainbow came from. The most common thing is that the word “rainbow” comes from “rayduga”, which translated from Ukrainian means “variegated arc”.

In order to find out the reason for the appearance of rainbows, I started by studying literature. In explanatory dictionaries the concepts of rainbow are given:

• A rainbow is a multi-colored arc in the sky, formed as a result of the refraction of sunlight in raindrops.
• Rainbow is an atmospheric phenomenon observed during or after rain.

The rainbow is one of the most beautiful natural phenomena, and people have long wondered about its nature. Even Aristotle, the ancient Greek philosopher, tried to explain the reason for the rainbow.

I learned that rainbows can be seen near waterfalls, fountains, and sprinklers. At fountains and waterfalls it happened that two or more arcs were seen. You can create a curtain of droplets yourself from a hand-held spray bottle and, standing with your back to the sun, see a rainbow created with your own hands. When watering plants in the garden on a bright sunny day, you can also see a small rainbow in the splashes of water.

How does a rainbow appear?

After a hot, muggy day, the clouds gathered and the rain began to pour. When it stopped, the setting sun sparkled over the horizon. And at that time, under the dark departing cloud, like a giant arc curved towards the ground, a rainbow appeared: seven pure colors, imperceptibly turning into one another - red, orange, yellow, green, blue, indigo, violet.

Why did such a miracle appear in the air? And the reason for this is sunlight, which appears to be white, but in fact consists of seven colors. When rays of sunlight pass through the air, we see them as white light. But on their way they met a raindrop. And the drop is close in shape to a prism - a geometric figure.

When a ray of sunlight passes through a glass prism or through a drop, its constituent rays are deflected at unequal angles. Red rays deviate the least, and violet rays deviate the most. The white beam breaks up into component rays, and a beautiful multi-colored bunny appears on the wall behind the prism, and a rainbow appears in the sky.

The outer edge of the rainbow's curved stripe is usually red. It is followed to the inner edge by other colors of the rainbow spectrum, up to blue and violet.

Sometimes you can see another, less bright rainbow around the first one. This is a secondary rainbow, in which the light is reflected twice in the drop. The secondary rainbow has an inverted color order, with purple on the outside and red on the inside.

A rainbow only appears during a rainstorm, when it rains and the sun shines at the same time. You must be strictly between the sun (it should be behind you) and the rain (it should be in front of you). Otherwise you won't see the rainbow!

The sun sends out its rays, which, falling on raindrops, create a spectrum. The sun, your eyes and the center of the rainbow should be on the same line.

If the sun is high in the sky, it is impossible to draw such a straight line. This is why rainbows can only be seen early in the morning or late afternoon. A morning rainbow means the sun is in the east and the rain is in the west. With an afternoon rainbow, the sun is in the west and the rain is in the east.

To remember the sequence of colors in the rainbow, people have come up with special simple phrases. In them, the first letters correspond to the first letters of the color names:

1. How once a lantern broke a lantern with his head.
2. I sewed blue sweatshirts for the dog, the giraffe, and the bunny.
3. Every hunter wants to know where the pheasant is going.

What types of rainbows are there?

During my research, I learned that there are different rainbows on earth.

Rainbows come with one or two arcs.Few people know, but there is also a night rainbow. At night, when the rain stops, a rainbow can also appear as a result of the action of rays reflected by the moon. Undoubtedly, it is not as bright as during the day, but it is clearly visible. IN winter time A rainbow occurs very rarely, but in its colorfulness and picturesqueness it differs from all others.

Red...

A red rainbow appears in the sky only at sunset and is the last chord of an ordinary rainbow. Sometimes it can be extremely bright and remain visible even 5-10 minutes after sunset. At sunset, rays travel a longer path through the air, and since the refractive index of water for longer wavelength (red) light is less than for shorter wavelength (violet), red light bends less when refracted. When the Sun sinks below the horizon, the rainbow first loses its shortest violet waves. They dissipate immediately. Then the blue, cyan, green, yellow disappear... What remains is the most persistent one - the red arc..

White...

Why does the rainbow seem white to us? The point is the size of the droplets from which the sun's rays are reflected. A white rainbow appears in foggy weather. The sizes of the fog particles are so small that the individual colored stripes into which a sunbeam breaks up when refracted do not spread out to the sides like a wide multi-colored fan, but barely open. The colors seem to overlap each other, and the eye no longer distinguishes colors, but sees only a colorless light arc - a white rainbow.

Lunar…

At night, when the full, definitely full moon hangs high in the dark, necessarily dark, sky, and at the same time opposite the moon it's raining, you may be lucky enough to see a rainbow at night! There are quite a lot of conditions for its appearance, so we rarely see a lunar rainbow. Rare, but possible! And she will also seem white to us. Although in fact it is quite colorful.

The fact is that our vision is designed in such a way that in low light the most sensitive receptors of the eye - the “rods” - almost do not work, so the lunar rainbow looks whitish.

Fiery...

A fire rainbow is one of the rarest atmospheric phenomena. It is formed due to the passage of light through light cirrus clouds and occurs only when the sun is very high in the sky...

It turns out that the mysterious heavenly “fire” is born from ice! After all, cirrus clouds are located very high above the earth, where it is very cold at any time of the year, and therefore they consist of flat ice crystals!

Unfortunately, such a coincidence, to put it mildly - hexagonal crystals, cirrus clouds and a high-standing sun - does not happen often. That is why a fire rainbow is a relatively rare and unique phenomenon.

"Smiley" in the skyAn inverted rainbow (otherwise called a near-zenith rainbow) is a type of fire rainbow and is even rarer. In addition to the conditions for the appearance of a fire rainbow, for it to appear as a rainbow smiley face in the sky, the center of its arc must be at the zenith point, located approximately 46° above the Sun. The near-zenith rainbow is very bright, with the colors of the spectrum reversed: violet at the top, red at the bottom.

Newton's study

I wonder if anyone in the history of mankind has tried to understand the nature of the rainbow?

I found the answer to this question on the Internet.

The first attempt to explain the rainbow was made in 1611 by Archbishop Antonio de Dominis. His explanation of the rainbow was contrary to the Bible, so he was excommunicated and sentenced to death.

The scientific explanation of the rainbow was first given by Rene Descartes in 1637. Descartes explained the rainbow based onlaws refraction and reflection of sunlight in drops of falling rain. But he did not yet know about the decomposition of white light into a spectrum during refraction. That's why Descartes' rainbow was white.
30 years later, Isaac Newton explained how colored rays are refracted in raindrops. According to the figurative expression of the American scientist A. Fraser, who has made a number of interesting studies of the rainbow in our time, “Descartes hung the rainbow in the right place in the sky, and Newton colored it with all the colors of the spectrum.”Although the multicolor spectrum of the rainbow is continuous, according to tradition, it is divided into 7 colors. It is believed that Isaac Newton was the first to choose the number 7, for whom the number 7 had a special symbolic meaning. Moreover, initially he distinguished only five colors - red, yellow, green, blue and violet.

Despite the fact that the Descartes–Newton theory of the rainbow was created more than 300 years ago, it correctly explains the main features of the rainbow, including the arrangement of colors.

So, we found out that the rainbow is round. In addition, it is multi-layered. Passing through the drop, the white sunbeam turns into a series of colored funnels, inserted one into the other, facing the observer. The outer funnel is red, orange, yellow are inserted into it, then green, etc., the inner one is purple.

Legends of the peoples of the world

People have long wondered about the nature of this beautiful phenomenon. Humanity has associated the rainbow with many beliefs and legends.

In ancient Greek mythology, for example, a rainbow is the road between heaven and earth along which the messenger between the world of the gods and the world of people, Iris, walked.

In China, they believed that the rainbow was a heavenly dragon, the union of Heaven and Earth.

In Slavic myths and legends, the rainbow was considered a magical heavenly bridge from heaven to earth, a road along which angels descend from heaven to collect water from rivers. They pour this water into the clouds, and from there it falls as life-giving rain.

Superstitious people believed that rainbows were a bad sign. They believed that the souls of the dead passed to the other world along a rainbow, and if a rainbow appeared, it meant someone’s imminent death.

The rainbow also appears in many folk signs related to weather forecasting. For example, a rainbow that is tall and steep foreshadows good weather, and low and flat - bad.

Conclusion

Having completed this work, I became convinced that rainbows are a well-known optical phenomenon in the atmosphere; observed when the sun illuminates a sheet of falling rain and the observer is between the sun and the rain. Rainbows are seen not only in the veil of rain. On a smaller scale, it can be seen on drops of water near waterfalls, fountains and in the surf. In this case, not only the Sun and the Moon, but also a spotlight can serve as a light source.

The arrangement of colors in the rainbow is interesting. It is always constant. The red color of the main rainbow is located on its upper edge, violet on the lower edge. Between these extreme colors, the remaining colors follow each other in the same sequence as in the solar spectrum. In principle, a rainbow never contains all the colors of the spectrum. Most often, blue, dark blue and rich pure red colors are absent or weakly expressed. As the size of raindrops increases, the color stripes of the rainbow narrow, and the colors themselves become more saturated.

At the same time, I learned how, thanks to Newton, centuries-old ideas about the origin of flowers were destroyed.

Literature

1. Ozhegov S.I. and Shvedova N.Yu. Dictionary Russian language. 4th edition, expanded. – M.: LLC “A TEMP”, 2008.

2. Travina I.V. 365 stories about planet Earth / Popular science publication for children. – M.: ZAO “ROSMAN-PRESS”, 2007.

3. Encyclopedia for the curious “Where, what and when?” CJSC Company "Makhaon" - M.: 2007.