How did scientist explain rainbows?
Aristotle was a greek scientist who lived in the fourth century BCE. He thought rainbows were caused by clouds reflecting sunlight at certain angles.
500 years later, the Islamic scientist, Ibn al-Haytham, thought the rainbow was like a reflection in a mirror. The cloud was like a mirror, with the sunlight reflecting off the cloud.
About 950 years ago, Shen Kuo, from china, suggested that the sunlight hit the rain to make rainbows.
The English scientist, Isaac Newton, was the first to explain the rainbow accurately, about 300 years ago. He showed that sunlight (also called white light) is made up of different colours. Our eyes don't see these colours seperately. Newton used a prism to demonstrate that white light is a mix of colours. When sunlight passes through a prism, it bends. This is called refraction. The angle of bending is different for various colours of light: red, orange, yellow, green, blue, indigo and violet. In a rainbow, every raindrop acts as a tiny prism. The sun shines through the raindrops and light is refracted, giving a rainbow.
