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