What causes a rainbow to form?

A rainbow is a group of colours that combine to make a beautiful pattern in the sky. A rainbow goes across the sky. The colours you would see in a rainbow are red, orange, yellow, green, blue, purple, pink and violet. There are three main stages. These are, when it rains, when the sun gives light for it to go into a raindrop and when the light reflects off the raindrop to form a rainbow!

Firstly it starts to rain. When it rains out comes a raindrop from the clouds and the light from the sun enters a raindrop and it hits the back of the raindrop.

After that, the light goes to the back of the raindrop and acts like a prism. When the white light hits the raindrop instead of the light coming out white it comes out as the colours of the rainbow.

Finally, once the rainbow has formed it will start to appear in the sky. You have to be in the right position to see the rainbow. The position you have to be involves the sun being behind you and the clouds or the raindrops in front of you. If you are in this position you should be able to see a rainbow.

To conclude, rainbows are not hard to see. If you are lucky there is a possible chance that you could see a double rainbow! Did you know that the longest rainbow in the sky stayed there from 6:57 am to 3:55 pm (eight hours and 58 minutes)! This rainbow took place in Taipei and lasted almost nine hours! This longest rainbow that happened in November 2017 has been put in the Guinness World records!  

Scarlett Ghossein
Year 3