Ecology

In many cultures, there are legends and myths about the power of the rainbow, people dedicate works of art, music and poetry to it.

Psychologists say that people admire this natural phenomenon because the rainbow is the promise of a bright, "rainbow" future.

Technically, a rainbow occurs when light passes through water droplets in the atmosphere, and the refraction of light leads to the form of a curved arch familiar to all of us different colors.

Here are these and others Interesting Facts about rainbow:

7 facts about the rainbow (with photo)

1. Rainbows are rarely seen at noon.

Most often, a rainbow occurs in the morning and evening. In order for a rainbow to form, sunlight must hit the raindrop at an angle of about 42 degrees. This is unlikely to happen when the Sun is higher than 42 degrees in the sky.

2. Rainbows also appear at night

Rainbows can also be seen after dark. This phenomenon is called a lunar rainbow. In this case, the rays of light are refracted by reflection from the Moon, and not directly from the Sun.

As a rule, it is less bright, since the brighter the light, the more colorful the rainbow.

3. Two people cannot see the same rainbow.

Light reflected from certain raindrops bounces off other drops from a completely different angle for each of us. This creates a different image of the rainbow.

Since two people cannot be in the same place, they cannot see the same rainbow. Moreover, even each of our eyes sees a different rainbow.

4. We can never reach the end of the rainbow

When we look at a rainbow, it seems as if it moves with us. This is because the light that forms it does so from a certain distance and angle for the observer. And this distance will always remain between us and the rainbow.

5. We can't see all the colors of the rainbow

Many of us from childhood remember a rhyme that allows you to remember the 7 classic colors of the rainbow (Every hunter wants to know where the pheasant is sitting).

Everyone is red

Hunter - orange

Wish - yellow

Know - green

Where - blue

Sitting - blue

Pheasant - purple

However, the rainbow is actually made up of over a million colors, including colors that the human eye cannot see.

6. Rainbow can be double, triple and even quadruple

We can see more than one rainbow if the light is reflected inside the droplet and separated into its constituent colors. A double rainbow appears when it happens inside the drop twice, a triple rainbow when it happens thrice, and so on.

With a quadruple rainbow, each time the beam is reflected, the light, and accordingly the rainbow, becomes paler and therefore the last two rainbows are very faintly visible.

To see such a rainbow, several factors need to coincide at once, namely a completely black cloud, and either a uniform distribution of raindrop sizes, or heavy rain.

7. You can make the rainbow disappear by yourself.

Using polarized sunglasses you can stop seeing the rainbow. This is because they are covered with a very thin layer of molecules that are arranged in vertical rows, and the light reflected from the water is polarized horizontally. This phenomenon can be seen in the video.

How to make a rainbow?

You can also make a real rainbow at home. There are several methods.

1. Method using a glass of water

Fill a glass with water and place it on a table in front of a window on a sunny day.

Place a piece of white paper on the floor.

Wet the window with hot water.

Adjust the glass and paper until you see a rainbow.

2. Method using a mirror

Place a mirror inside a glass filled with water.

The room should be dark and the walls white.

Shine a flashlight into the water, moving it until you see a rainbow.

3. CD method

Take CD, and wipe it so that it is not dusty.

Lay it on a flat surface, under a light, or in front of a window.

Look at the disk and enjoy the rainbow. You can spin the dial to see how the colors move.

4. Haze method

Use a water hose on a sunny day.

Close the opening of the hose with your finger, creating a haze

Point the hose towards the sun.

Look at the haze until you see a rainbow.

Often, when the sun leans over the horizon and illuminates the outgoing rain, a rainbow appears in the sky. It's very beautiful a natural phenomenon. How many colors are in the rainbow and which ones?

S. Marshak wrote a poem about this:

Spring sun with rain
Building a rainbow together
seven color semicircle
Of the seven wide arcs.

The nature of the phenomenon

This huge seven-colored sickle in the sky seems to be an extraordinary miracle. True, people have already managed to find a natural explanation for it. White color the sun consists of rays of different colors, or rather of light waves different lengths. Longer wavelengths are red, shorter wavelengths are purple. The sun's rays, penetrating from the air into raindrops, are refracted, disintegrate into their components light waves and come out already in the form of a spectrum, a multi-color stripe.

As you know, flowers do not exist in nature at all, they are only a figment of our imagination. Therefore, the actual number of colors of the rainbow can be expressed by the paradox: "Not at all or infinity." The spectrum is continuous, it has an infinite number of shades; the only question is how many of them we can distinguish and encode (name).

Fairy tale "The conversation of pencils"

The Bulgarian writer M. Stoyan devoted a fairy tale story to the colors of the rainbow, which he called "The Conversation of Pencils". Here he is.

Often, when it rains, you stand at the window, look, listen, and it seems to you that all things have a voice, that they all talk. And your pencils, right?

Hear, the red one says: "I am a poppy." An orange voice follows him: "I am an orange." Yellow is also not silent: "I am the sun." And the green rustles: "I am the forest." Blue softly hums: "I am the sky, the sky, the sky." Blue rings: "I am a bell." And purple whispers: "I am a violet."

The rain is ending. A seven-color rainbow curves above the ground.

“Look! exclaims the red pencil. Rainbow is me. - "And I!" - adds orange. "And I!" smiles yellow. "And I!" green laughs. "And I!" - having fun blue. "And I!" - exults blue. "And I!" Violet rejoices.

And everyone is happy: in the rainbow over the horizon - and a poppy, and an orange, and the sun, and a forest, and the sky, and a bell, and a violet. It has everything!

The colors of the rainbow are 7 spectral tones into which a white ray of light splits. As a celestial phenomenon, it is considered fabulously beautiful and is often depicted in art, creativity, and other cultural fields.

7 tones, you can remember with a simple rhyme: Every hunter wants to know: where the pheasant is sitting. Capital letters- shade names.

These 7 colors are located in the rainbow in descending order of wavelength ()

For easy memorization of the location of the tones in the rainbow, there is a nursery rhyme.

The colors of the rainbow are the original, natural gamut of tones, relative to which all available shades are built, with the exception of achromatic, complex and intermediate ones.
Achromatic include: white, black, gray. To complex: neutral, brown, beige. Intermediate: pink, magenta, since they are not spectral, but the result of visualization of the reflection on the retina of the red and purple waves (shortest + longest).

The rainbow is a heavenly gift in the understanding of color, its ancestor and inspirer. This is aesthetics, symbolism, which takes place in many religions.

USEFUL ARTICLES ON THIS TOPIC (click on the picture)

A bright, cheerful, luminous rainbow has been considered a symbol of good luck and luck since ancient times. If a rainbow flashes in the sky, then the day will be happy and easy. And some even make a wish when they see this beautiful natural phenomenon in the sky. It is believed that how many colors a person sees in a rainbow, so many wishes he can make.

What is a rainbow

A rainbow is an optical phenomenon that occurs not only in the sky. In fact, this is the refraction of colors. Physicists have proven that light has a certain spectrum of hues, and the rainbow clearly demonstrates this.

It occurs due to the refraction of light in the smallest droplets of water fog or rain that float in the atmosphere. Light is reflected differently in water droplets, hence different shades appear.

Where is it seen

Rainbows can be observed not only in the sky. You can see a small rainbow if you sit next to the fountain and catch the refraction of light near the stream of water. You can see it on a white sheet of paper when you write with a transparent pen on a sunny day. Also, a rainbow can be seen through a prism, if this prism is brought to the sun's rays or to an ordinary electric light bulb.

But most often, of course, we observe it in the sky.

How many colors are in the rainbow

Science has proven that the rainbow has seven colors. This:

• red;
• orange;
• yellow;
• green;
• blue;
• blue;
• violet.

In antiquity, there were not yet so many precise optical instruments to carefully consider how many colors the rainbow has. And the human eye can not always accurately determine the color gamut.

Aristotle, for example, singled out only three primary colors - red, yellow and green. But in Japanese culture there is no traditional green color, so the inhabitants of the Land of the Rising Sun believe that there are only six colors in the rainbow.

And the great mathematician Isaac Newton spent a lot of time studying the refraction of light and came to the conclusion that there are five colors in the rainbow. Then he looked at the sixth one, the orange one. This number - six - seemed to him imperfect for describing natural phenomena, so he decided to add a blue color to the rainbow, which he called "indigo".

We have 7 and they have 6

If you think that after the proven fact of scientists, how many colors are in the rainbow, all people on the planet agreed with this statement, then you are deeply mistaken. In China, for some reason, they believe that there are five colors in the rainbow - exactly the same number as the elements on the planet. Until now, in Germany, America, England, France and a number of other countries, children are told that the rainbow consists of six colors.

Why is this happening? The fact is that blue and very similar to each other, they are distinguishable only by the degree of depth. In addition, in a number of languages ​​\u200b\u200b"blue" and "blue" are called the same. IN English language there is only one to describe these colors common word. Therefore, there is still such confusion as to how many colors are in the rainbow.

Easy to remember

The order of the colors in the rainbow is always the same, no matter what time of day we observe it, whether it is big or small, it stood in the sky for a long time or it flashed and went out in a few seconds. The first color is red, which gradually brightens and turns into orange. In turn, the orange becomes even lighter and turns into yellow. Yellow gradually turns green, then blue appears, which turns into a rich blue, and the last, final color of the rainbow spectrum is purple.

Remembering the order of the colors in the rainbow is quite simple. You need to learn just one mnemonic phrase - and you can easily name which flowers are in the rainbow, without hesitation. So memorize this sentence: "Every Hunter Wants to Know Where the Pheasant Sits." Simply and easily. And now you just have to take the first letter of each word and name the color of the rainbow:

• each is red;
• hunter - orange;
• wishes - yellow;
• know - green;
• where - blue;
• sitting - blue;
• pheasant - purple.

It is this phrase about a hunter and a sitting pheasant that has taken root in Russian-speaking culture. Although there are several more successful suggestions that allow you to remember the rainbow spectrum. For example: "Once upon a time, Jean the City Ringer Broke a Lantern." There are also more modern interpretations: "Every Designer Wants to Know Where to Download Photoshop".

Well, it's already, as they say, choose to your taste, how to remember the location of the colors in the rainbow.

Warm or cold

A rainbow in the sky always seems bright, cheerful, lively and very warm. It shines and sparkles, and it seems that everything consists of But, nevertheless, cold tones are also present in it.

Let's see how many cold colors are in the rainbow. Everything related to blue refers to cold tones. Thus, there are three cool colors in the rainbow - blue, cyan and green. But purple, which has shades of purple, is neither warm nor cold, it is transitional.

Accordingly, there are three rainbows: red, orange and yellow.

This palette, which divides colors into warm and cold, is used by artists and painters. There are even several that divide the solar spectrum into warm, cold and intermediate shades.

Always against the sun

A rainbow always appears on the opposite side of the sun. So if you look at it, the sun will always shine from behind. Most often, a rainbow occurs in the morning or in the evening, and this also has a completely reasonable explanation from the point of view of physics. When the sun is on the horizon, the rainbow is at its fullest and largest. The higher the sun rises, the smaller the semicircle becomes. And when the star rises to a height of 43 degrees relative to the horizon, it is no longer possible to see the rainbow. Because the angle for the refraction of light is not suitable.

The red color of the rainbow is always located on the outside of the arc, and purple is always on the inside. But! Very often there is a double rainbow, when there are two arcs in the sky at once. So, in the second rainbow, the colors are reversed.

By the way, seeing two rainbows is considered even greater luck than one.

The number of colors in the rainbow always remains the same, but people's ideas about this beautiful optical phenomenon have changed over time. Ancient tribes, for example, divided the rainbow into two colors - dark and light.

Rainbows can be seen not only in the sun, but also after dark. Then the sun's rays begin to reflect from the moon, and a rainbow can appear.

The rainbow does not freeze in place, and two people who are in different parts of the city will see it in a completely different way. It will seem to one that it hovered over the river, and to the other that it is located directly above the new buildings. That is why when you photograph a rainbow at the same time in the same city, you get completely different pictures.

Not all people can see all seven colors of the rainbow. It depends how sharp your eyesight is. Some may see peach in the rainbow, And they don't make it up. After all, seven colors are the main classical colors. And there are really a great many shades in the rainbow, and some cannot be caught by the human eye.

The rainbow can disappear if you wear polaroid glasses. The coating of these glasses is located so that the light is refracted vertically and the person simply does not see what others see.

Ha, funny question! Even a child knows "where the pheasant sits", that is, that the rainbow has seven colors. Well, what if you don’t operate with the stamp laid down from school, but try to look at the rainbow with a critical eye yourself? The answer will not be so obvious. It all depends on many factors - on the weather, on the characteristics of the place of observation, on the characteristics of the observer's vision.

Aristotle, in particular, singled out only three colors in the rainbow: red, green and purple. All other colors, he believed, are a mixture of these three. IN Kievan Rus you would be authoritatively assured that the rainbow has four colors. The Kievan chronicler wrote in 1073: "In the rainbow are scarlet, and blue, and green, and crimson."

But the natives of Australia have six colors in the rainbow, but at the same time, some African tribes are still sure that the rainbow has only two colors - dark and light.

Who saw exactly seven colors in the rainbow? It was Isaac Newton. Unlike his predecessors, Newton not only observed the decomposition of white light into a spectrum, but also conducted a lot of interesting experiments with prisms and lenses.

For the first time, the phenomenon of a rainbow as a refraction of the sun's rays in raindrops was explained in 1267 by Roger Bacon. But only Newton analyzed the light, and refracting a beam of light through a prism, he initially counted 5 colors: blue, green, yellow, red and violet (purple for him).

In the future, while conducting research, the scientist looked closely and noticed the sixth. But Newton was such a believer that he did not like this number, and he considered it a demonic obsession. And then the scientist "looked out" another color. The seventh color Newton fancied indigo. He liked the number seven very much. It was considered ancient and mystical, there are seven days of the week, and seven deadly sins. This is how Newton became the founder of the principle of the seven-color rainbow.

The colors in the rainbow are arranged in the order in which they correspond to the spectrum. visible light. In Russian, there are such phrases that help to remember their sequence:

Once Jacques the bell ringer broke a lantern with his head.

Every hunter wants to know where the pheasant is sitting.

The initial letter of each word in these phrases corresponds to the initial letter of the name of a certain color of the rainbow.

Many peoples, however, neglect the seventh color, they again have six colors in the rainbow. For example, Americans, Germans, French and Japanese believe that the rainbow has exactly six colors. But besides the quantity, there is another problem, the colors are also wrong: red, orange, yellow, blue, indigo and purple. Where is green, you ask? Simply, for example, in Japan there is no green color at all. And this is not because they are color blind, it's just that their language does not have green. It seems to be there, but it is a shade of blue, like we have scarlet - a shade of red. But the British do not have blue, for them it is light blue.

So the question "How many colors does the rainbow have?" - not from the competence of biology and physics. Linguistics should deal with it, since the colors of the rainbow depend only on the language of communication, there is nothing a priori physical behind them. There are seven colors in the rainbow of the Slavic peoples only because there is a separate name for blue and green.

It is very difficult to learn to distinguish colors for the Yakuts. Even intelligent Yakuts mix shades of colors. They are especially confused blue, blue, purple and green. For this whole group of colors they have a common name kyuoh, and although their eyes are quite capable of distinguishing green from blue and blue, there are no individual names in the language. A rainbow (kustuk) is considered tricolor among the Yakuts. Differences in the perception of colors on the Asian mainland are noticeable even among different tribes of the same people. So, in the language of the Upper Kolyma Yukagirs there are no names for "green" and "blue" colors; the Lower Kolyma Yukaghirs have green and blue colors, but there is no word for yellow; Alazei Yukagirs have the words "green" and "yellow", but there is no word "blue". Researchers consider this fact evidence of the origin of the Yukaghir tribes from different ethnic ancestors.

A very interesting message about the non-seeing of certain colors by a number of peoples. It would be necessary to add facts known to science: the ancient Greeks and Persians did not see blue. Homer's sky is either "iron" (probably gray in cloudy weather), or "copper" (that is, golden - in sunny weather). The Papuans do not see the color green, living in the green jungle!

What other colors will appear in the rainbow of our descendants?