Many people have a lot of unanswered questions regarding some of the things that we as humans see on a daily basis. Why do rainbows occur? How are mirages visible? Why is the sky blue? How come there are so many colors in a sunset? All of these questions can be answered using physics. Physics can explain many of the natural phenomenon’s we see everyday.
Glass can create different effects using visible light and the spectrum of colors. The effect glass creates when light is refracted is called dispersion. Dispersion occurs when the different colors, like blue and red, refract or bend in the glass in different ways. One specific device that has this effect is a prism; it breaks up the white light into all of the different colors. Raindrops act as prisms because if the sun is shining while it is raining then the light from the sun will refract or be dispersed off the raindrop. The white light hits the raindrop and when it is dispersed it is separated into different colors. This creates the effect of the rainbow and this is how we see rainbows. The diagram below demonstrates a raindrop acting as a prism with the white light from the sun being dispersed and refracted off it.
The raindrop acts like mirror also because it some of the dispersed light back at the sun. The different colors in the white light enter the raindrop at different angles therefore creating the different colors. Each raindrop only helps to contribute to one beam of light that is seen in the rainbow. Raindrops that are found located higher in the sky are red, orange or yellow light and raindrops that are found located lower in the sky are green, blue and violet. The antisolar line helps us to determine the color we will see. If a raindrop is located at 42° of the antisolar line then we will see red light. This helps to create the rainbow as a whole and make it so large. If the raindrop is located at 40° at the antisolar line then we will see blue light etc. The diagram below helps to explain how we see things due to the antisolar line. (Physics of Rainbows)
Why is the sky blue? Light in the sky is considered to be scattered light. This means that it is made up of many particles that when light is refracted or dispersed off of them it creates the blue sky that we see everyday. However, the sky is not only made up of blue light, it is made up of all the colors of the spectrum our eyes just mainly see blue. The image of clouds in the sky is created a fairly similar way. The reason why our eyes see white clouds is because it is light bouncing of water particles in the air. Therefore the clouds may look white and opaque, but they are really transparent.(Physics of the Blue Sky)
Sunsets and sunrises have the effect of being very colorful because of light scattering off of molecules located in the atmosphere. The spectrum of the color blue is much more readily visible to the human eye therefore that is why when we look at the sky we mainly see the color blue. At sunrise and sunset the light from the sun has a harder time getting through the atmosphere to our eyes therefore light is scattered towards the red end of the spectrum.(Why the Sky is Blue)
Mirages are another effect that can be explained due to physics. Mirages happen when there are two different temperature layers in the air. There is a hot layer of air and a cold layer of air. Because there are two layers there is a boundary between them which can refract light it creates an image. An example of when this can occur is on asphalt in the summer time.(Mirages1)
Works Cited
http://www.unmuseum.mus.pa.us/mirage.htm
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