How Does Neil deGrasse Tyson Explains Rainbows Work?

Rainbows are like colorful flags that appear when sunlight and water droplets dance together.

Imagine you're playing with a water sprinkler on a sunny day. As the water sprays into the air, each tiny drop of water acts like a little mirror, but not just any mirror, it's a super smart one that bends light. This bending is called refraction.

When sunlight hits a water droplet, it slows down and changes direction, kind of like how your bike wheel turns when you go around a corner. The different colors in sunlight, red, orange, yellow, green, blue, indigo, violet, each bend just slightly differently.

As the light bounces inside the droplet and exits, it bends again, spreading out into its full color spectrum, like when you shove your hand through a prism, and all the colors pop out like confetti.

If you're standing in the right spot, with the sun behind you and rain in front of you, each droplet sends a tiny bit of colored light to your eye. All those droplets work together, creating the beautiful arc of a rainbow, like a candy stripe that stretches across the sky!