My pal Travis posted this picture of a rainbow after our recent rains. Pretty cool. And it got me to thinking (usually a dangerous thing).

What is a rainbow?

Oh, I know, I know, it's this beautiful arc in the sky once the storms and the rain has passed by. It will illicit a 'Wow!', or at the very least a warm smile when you see one (or maybe a double rainbow, really cool).

But I mean...what exactly is a rainbow? Why are they there? Where do they come from?

Well, being the inquisitive hard working person I am, I spent hours of extensive research to find the answer.

Ahhh...OK, I googled it.

And according to my friends at Wikipedia:

A rainbow is a meteorological phenomenon that is caused by reflection, refraction and dispersion of light in water droplets resulting in a spectrum of light appearing in the sky.

Oh. Oh.  Yeah, ahem, just what I thought and I would have said.

And did you know rainbow's caused by sunlight always appear in the portion of the sky directly opposite the sun? You did? Fine, you're smarter than me!

Anyway, now I know what a rainbow really is, although I'm pretty sure when asked an hour from now, I might have forgotten. Besides, I got a bigger kettle of fish to fry. I'm off to find that pot of gold at the end.

Wikipedia Contributed To This Article

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