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If I understand correctly, the "spread" of a rainbow is due to the higher frequency light refracting at a different angle than the lower frequency light. So wou
by TehCorwiz 5y ago
If I understand correctly, the "spread" of a rainbow is due to the higher frequency light refracting at a different angle than the lower frequency light. So wouldn't this be determined first by the frequencies of light (is there IR/UV light to refract?) entering the refractive medium (ie. atmospheric water or maybe a prism) and second by the absorptive / refractive properties of the medium (some materials are opaque in some light bands but not others) with regard to different frequencies of light?
- _Microft 5y agoYes and yes. The range of colors is limited by our vision, though. A hint at that is that the colors of the rainbow, so pretty in the sky, cover the full range (red to violet) of our vision. If rainbows only contained a subset of the colors we could see, e.g. from yellow to green, we might better assume that this is all that there are. > So wouldn't this be determined first by the frequencies of light (is there IR/UV light to refract?) entering the refractive medium I have photographed IR bands of a rainbow while the visible ones had already faded for example. That was right around sunset, so I suspect it was an extreme form of "red sunset" playing into this.