What causes a rainbow?

Updated February 21, 2017 | Factmonster Staff

What causes a rainbow?

Although light looks colorless, it’s made up of many colors-red, orange, yellow, green, blue, indigo and violet. These colors are known as the spectrum. When light shines into water, the rays of light refract, or bend, at different angles. Different colors bend at different angles--red bends the least and violet the most. When light passes through a raindrop at a certain angle, the rays separate into the colors of the spectrum-and you see a beautiful rainbow.


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