You’re looking outside one rainy day, when you see it: a colorful picture in the sky painted with red, orange, yellow, blue, indigo, and violet. How does such a masterpiece of color appear in the sky? It’s the artist in Mother Nature, hard at work, that creates this rainbow.        

To see the arc of colors, the sunlight and rain must interact. What does the sun’s light have to do with the brilliant colors we see in the sky? Everything! For us to see a rainbow, the sun must shine through the raindrops, acting as a prism. A prism is any clear body used to reflect rays of light.   

Rainbows are visible when conditions are perfect. The rain will fall in one part of the sky and the sun will shine in another. That’s why the best place to spot a rainbow is the part of the sky that’s across from the sun.  

Does it really matter where the sun is? Yes. Sunlight is the most significant part in the design of the rainbow. The sun shining through the rain makes us able to see a rainbow.

Once sunlight meets and enters a raindrop, the light is refracted, or bent. If you could see this happening, it may look like mom’s partially cooked spaghetti slumping down in boiling water.  

Next, that same light is reflected, or bounced off the back of the raindrop. To get a good sense of what is happening, hold a mirror across from the sun on a sunny day. You will see the light reflect off of the  mirror. The light is then bent again as it leaves the droplet of water.  

This is a complicated process, but there’s more. The light has to do this with many raindrops, not just one. When the sun’s light hits many raindrops at an angle, the rainbow’s colors are visible. Multiple raindrops are important because only one color of light is seen in each drop of water. You see every color when the sun shines through drops at different angles. 

We see more than colors when we view a rainbow. We also see shapes. When we look at a rainbow from the ground, we see an arc. If you were able to watch from the sky, you would see a circle because the sun’s rays would bounce off the raindrops from everywhere around you instead of above you.  

The next time you see a rainbow, go ahead and marvel at that mystical picture in the sky. Nature’s work in creating a rainbow is like an artist painting his masterpiece. Just as a painter needs his    colors, the rain needs the bending and bouncing of sunlight. The rainbow that has you staring in wonder is more than a pretty picture. It’s a work of art.