Mondo Knows Facts
A rainbow forms opposite the Sun
Sunlight bends and reflects inside raindrops to make an arc around the antisolar point Light enters a raindrop, refracts, reflects once off the back and refracts again on the way out. The drop sends the strongest red light out at about 42 degrees and violet a few degrees lower. Because the geometry depends on the Sun behind you, a rainbow always sits opposite it. It sits in Mondo's science collection, one of 200 facts that each trace back to the reference below.
Where this comes from
Facts that can change over time are reviewed and updated. If something here looks wrong, Mondo would rather know than be confidently incorrect.
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More facts like this
Rayleigh scattering makes the daytime sky blueAir molecules scatter short blue wavelengths far more strongly than long red onesA polarising filter blocks half of ordinary lightThe filter passes only waves oscillating along one axis and absorbs the restNewton split white light with a prismA glass prism spreads sunlight into a rainbow because each colour bends differentlyThe double slit experiment shows light interferingTwo narrow slits produce alternating bright and dark bands on a screenHerschel found infrared beyond the red endA thermometer placed past the red light of a spectrum recorded the most heatThe photoelectric effect needs a minimum frequencyWeak blue light ejects electrons from a metal that intense red light cannot touch
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Tags: light, optics, weather
A rainbow forms opposite the Sun: the short answers
- Where does this come from, and can I check it?
- Sunlight bends and reflects inside raindrops to make an arc around the antisolar point. The figure is taken from NOAA, which is linked in full on this page. Every fact on Mondo Knows names its source rather than repeating an unsourced claim.
- Is this really a science fact?
- Yes. It sits on the Science shelf, one of 2,600 sourced facts grouped into space, animals, the human body, history, science and more. Category pages collect every fact in the same field.
- What else can I read about it?
- The links under the fact point to a quiz, game, puzzle or calculator on the same subject, and the shelf below shows related facts. The wording here is original, and quoted phrases are marked as quotations.