Speaker 1: Welcome to Brainstuff, a production of iHeartRadio. Hey Brainstuff, Lauren
Speaker 1: vogel Bomb here with a classic episode of the podcast
Speaker 1: that this one has to do with how rainbows work,
Speaker 1: how to find them, why you can't reach the end
Speaker 1: of one, and how they're not actually bows at all.
Speaker 1: Hey Brainstuff, Lauren Vogelbomb here. As far as get rich
Speaker 1: quick schemes go, stumbling upon gold the end of a
Speaker 1: rainbow sounds pretty delightful. But is it actually possible to
Speaker 1: get to the end of a rainbow? And if so,
Speaker 1: what would you find when you got there. Let's start
Speaker 1: with the bad news. Leprechns are liars. You cannot reach
Speaker 1: the end of a rainbow that appears in the sky.
Speaker 1: If you were to mark on a map the place
Speaker 1: where the rainbow seems to meet the land, and then
Speaker 1: travel to that location, you would not be standing inside
Speaker 1: a glorious pillar of colors. There would be nothing there
Speaker 1: except probably the fresh smell of a recent rain shower.
Speaker 1: To understand why this is, we need to look at
Speaker 1: how rainbows form. Rainbows are created when sunlight reflects and
Speaker 1: refracts through water. Droplets suspend in the air in front
Speaker 1: of you while the sun is behind you. Those water
Speaker 1: droplets act like both a mirror and a prism. Like
Speaker 1: a mirror, they reflect the sunlight back towards you, but
Speaker 1: like a prism, they also bend and disperse that light.
Speaker 1: This is because rays of light shining through the air
Speaker 1: change speed when they enter a different medium, for example,
Speaker 1: droplets of water. This sudden change in speed bends the
Speaker 1: trajectory of the light and disperses white light into the
Speaker 1: whole roy g Bib spectrum. The reason you see a
Speaker 1: nice ordered gradient of colors within a rainbow going from
Speaker 1: red to violet is because this refraction bends each of
Speaker 1: the different colors of light at a slightly different angle. So,
Speaker 1: for example, red light bends at forty two degrees, violet
Speaker 1: light bends at forty degrees, and all the other colors
Speaker 1: are somewhere in between. So okay, let's find a rainbow.
Speaker 1: To do this, you need to locate your antisolar point.
Speaker 1: Your antisolar point is the point in space that's one
Speaker 1: hundred and eighty degrees or exactly opposite from the sun.
Speaker 1: A simple way to find this is to go outside
Speaker 1: and look for the shadow of your own head. That's
Speaker 1: your antisolar point. Now imagine drawing a line straight from
Speaker 1: the sun through your head to the shadow of your head.
Speaker 1: Now look up. If there is a rainbow to be seen,
Speaker 1: you will find it by facing away from the sun
Speaker 1: and looking forty two degrees above your antisolar point. Notice
Speaker 1: that the apparent location of your rainbow depends on three things.
Speaker 1: Where the sun is, where the water droplets are, and
Speaker 1: where your eyes are. Change any one of those variables
Speaker 1: and you'll see a different rainbow or none at all.
Speaker 1: So no matter where you see your rainbow, if you
Speaker 1: try to walk out to meet it, you'll be changing
Speaker 1: the variable of your own position, and you could be
Speaker 1: walking forever, or at least until your rainbow disappears. Trying
Speaker 1: to find the end of a rain rainbow is sort
Speaker 1: of like trying to walk to the end of your
Speaker 1: own shadow. Somebody else could stand at the apparent end
Speaker 1: of your shadow or rainbow, but you will never ever
Speaker 1: reach this location yourself. You can, of course, find earthly
Speaker 1: rainbows in a waterfall or the spray of a sprinkler
Speaker 1: or hose. You might even perceive yourself to be standing
Speaker 1: right next to one, depending on the angle of light
Speaker 1: coming into the water. But here's one more thing. Those
Speaker 1: rainbows you see in the sky aren't actually bows. Rainbows
Speaker 1: are circular. Usually when you're standing on the ground, most
Speaker 1: of the rainbow is blocked by the horizon. In rare cases,
Speaker 1: like if you're in an airplane, you'll be able to
Speaker 1: see the entire rainbow. Hoop, rain loop, rainhole. It's around
Speaker 1: spectacular beauty, but there's an obvious takeaway from this it
Speaker 1: doesn't ever actually meet the ground anywhere. Today's episode is
Speaker 1: based on a videoscript orhoustopworks dot com written by Joe McCormick.
Speaker 1: To hear more from Joe, check out his podcast stuff
Speaker 1: to Blow Your Mind. Brainstuff is a production of iHeartRadio
Speaker 1: in partnership withhstuffworks dot Com and is produced by Tyler Klang.
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