DISPERSING MAGIC AND COLOR

I was thinking it might be a good time of the year to bring out something light and bright and beautiful, since we’ve been dealing with gray skies and snow for several months. When I wrote the blogs on weather (Partly Cloudy or Mostly Sunny? and The Answer to all Your Questions), I wanted to end with the magic of rainbows, but once I got into them, I realized they couldn’t be delegated to a single small paragraph. In fact, I will try not to get too technical because I would end up writing a science report! Rainbows can seem pretty complex when you read an expert describing the science behind them, but it can be simplified somewhat - I'll do my best as a non-expert.

What’s the most important thing about rainbows? An artist is typing, so the answer is quite logical: they are beautiful. They are miraculous. They give us enjoyment, hope, and that warm fuzzy feeling of wonderment and “all is well with the world” feeling. For a moment, we can set aside our problems and just soak in the wonder and beauty of them. I could say that if you don’t want the “magic” of rainbows to be dispelled, you may want to stop reading at this point, but to me science and nature are magical and amazing and after researching rainbows, I found them even more magical. So read on.

Rainbows are a meteorological phenomenon. [Definition break: phenomenon – a fact or situation that is observed to exist or happen, especially one whose cause or explanation is in question. Synonyms: marvel, wonder, singularity, miracle, spectacle.] Rainbows need two ingredients to exist: sunlight and raindrops (billions or trillions of them). If we want to be scientific or complicated, our key words are reflection, refraction and dispersion.

To simplify it though, let’s look into raindrops first. Why raindrops? Because they act as prisms when sunlight passes through them. A prism is a transparent optical element with flat, polished surfaces with at least one angled surface. You’ve seen crystals hanging in a window, haven't you? Have you ever spun one in the sunlight? Tiny rainbows jump around the room. But flat surfaces? That doesn’t sound like a raindrop to me – except nature is that stunning. Somehow raindrops create the same type of surface to give us that wonder of color. Amazing. Of import, raindrops are not tear shaped as they are usually perceived, but shaped like the top of a hamburger bun, round on the top and flat on the bottom – I’m guessing there’s our flat spot.

Did you know that sunlight is a mixture of colors? Here’s the miraculous part: when sunlight passes through a prism, some of the light is bending (refracting) or breaking, as well as reflecting. When the light leaves the prism (disperses), it spreads out into a band of colors which creates an atmospheric solar spectrum. The reason the colors always come out in a certain order is because red, which is always first, is the least bent, then orange, yellow, green, blue, and lastly violet, because it is bent the most. Amazing stuff, yes? I might just have to rethink the places who named their businesses “spectrum”.

Rainbows come in the wake of a rainstorm when the sunlight breaks through rain clouds. Something to take into account is that you can only see a rainbow if the rain is in front of you and the sun is behind you – or you're looking in the section of sky directly opposite the sun. Does this mean there could be rainbows that are there, but we can’t see them if we’re not looking in quite the right direction? Nice. I believe that is true of life. Just because we can’t see the joy, the good, the hopeful surrounding us, doesn’t mean it doesn’t exist.

One of my friends who lost her husband at a fairly young age told me her husband had loved rainbows and that for weeks after he had tragically died, she saw rainbows everywhere she went. She was comforted in thinking he was with her in spirit.

There's so much more to the phenomenon of rainbows, but we'll leave it there to keep it simple. Let’s look in different directions to see the good, to get some hope, to see those rainbows in life. And let’s let the magic and hope of the beauty of rainbows into our souls and go on with the rest of our cloudy winter days with a peaceful, joy-filled heart, knowing sunnier days are coming.