Rainbow is one of the most amazing and beautiful natural phenomena. Since time immemorial, the timid smile of the heavens of man has attracted and helped him to believe in a miracle, in a fairy tale, in a dream. And while schoolchildren are asking the question: "Rainbow - what is this phenomenon?", adults are in no hurry to tell a complex scientific answer. It is much more pleasant to understand that this natural phenomenon is the embodiment of all the colors of life, a symbol of hope that certainly appears after heavy rain, which means it brings a drop of joy and happiness to this world.
Legends of the peoples of the world. Divine Beginning
Ancient man saw in the arcuate color spectrum an exclusively divine principle. So, in Ancient Greece, the winged goddess of the rainbow Irida was the messenger of the immortal celestials, on whose clothes, like precious stones, dew drops shimmered. In ancient India, they believed that the rainbow is the bow of the supreme thunder god Indra. In China, this natural phenomenon was associated with the heavenly dragon, which combines yin and yang, heaven and earth. The American Indians believed that the rainbow is a ladder to the other world; for the peoples of Africa - a snake that encircles the globe and protects a valuable treasure. In Scandinavian and Slavic mythology, the rainbow- a wonderful bridge that provides a link between Heaven and Earth.
Physics or chemistry. The incomprehensible nature of the phenomenon
Children often ask their parents the question: "Rainbow - what kind of phenomenon? Physical or chemical?" Adults, in turn, experience difficulty and do not know how to tell the child about the nature of the phenomenon in an accessible language. First of all, it is worth explaining to the little “why” that sunlight consists of all the colors that are in the world. But to see the iridescent elements, you need a special object - a prism, which decomposes the color spectrum into separate color lines. In the rainbow, raindrops act as a prism, which change the sunbeam beyond recognition.
Thus, a rainbow is an atmospheric optical phenomenon that a person perceives as seven separate colors, namely: red, orange, yellow, green, blue, indigo, violet.
Burn to shine. Species of rainbow
Usually, a person sees a rainbow in the form of a graceful arc, although in fact it has the shape of a circle. To view this natural phenomenon in all its glory is possible only from an airplane or on top of a mountain.
But, in addition to the usual form, the rainbow can also acquire more extravagant ones. So, in the sky you can see a double "heavenly snake", while the inner rainbow is always brighter than the outer one, since the latter is only a reflection of the first. To see such an unusual phenomenon, as a rule, to success, to the favor of Fortune and the fulfillment of cherishedwishes.
An inverted rainbow is much less common. The reason for this natural phenomenon is a curtain of cirrus clouds formed by ice crystals. Interestingly, the colors in this rainbow are reversed from purple to red.
A colorless or white rainbow often appears during fog, consisting of water droplets. A similar natural phenomenon can also appear in the sky at night, when the sky is filled with the bright light of the moon. The prism in this case is still rain.
It happens that a rainbow appears in the winter. This usually happens on a frosty morning when the air is filled with tiny ice crystals. But the rarest is the round-horizontal rainbow, which can only occur thanks to crystals in the shape of a hexagon.
Memory training. The correct arrangement of colors in the rainbow
To remember the order of the colors in the rainbow, it is enough to learn a simple saying, known to many since childhood. The initial letter of each word will tell you the shade that starts with the same letter. The children's rhyme goes like this: every hunter wants to know where the pheasant sits.
