Rainbows

Rainbows

Rainbows
Reading Level

	edHelper's suggested reading level:	grades 7 to 8
	Flesch-Kincaid grade level:	7.66

Vocabulary

challenging words:

fairy-like, standing, in-between, colorless, spectrum, colored, prism, indigo, atmosphere, invisible, reverse, primary, secondary, measurement, supposedly, split

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Spanish: Los Arco iris

Rainbows
By Sharon Fabian

¹     Scientists who are interested in light waves study rainbows. Artists learn all about the color spectrum from a rainbow. There is also the pot of gold thing that people have been trying to figure out about rainbows.

²     Scientists know that a rainbow is something that happens in the Earth's atmosphere after a storm. A rainbow occurs when light from the sun is separated and reflected as it hits raindrops still in the atmosphere after a storm. Sunlight hits each raindrop and is reflected towards earth. At the same time the sunlight is bent, or refracted. Depending on where the raindrop is and where you are standing to look at it, the refracted sunlight will have different angles. Each different angle measurement of the light produces a different color of the rainbow. A full rainbow shows us light reflected at all different angles, from different parts of the sky. It includes the full spectrum of colors: red, orange, yellow, green, blue, indigo, and violet. The red light is actually coming toward us at a 42-degree angle, the violet light at a 40-degree angle, and the other colors at angles in between these two. This can only happen when the sun is low in the sky. This is why we usually see rainbows in the early morning or late afternoon.

³     Sometimes you can see a primary rainbow, which is bright and goes from red on the outer edge to violet on the inner edge, and also a secondary rainbow, which is not as bright and has the colors in reverse. A secondary rainbow is made when the colors reflect a second time.

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