Why is a rainbow different color, unlike the uniform “white” light of the sun?
Sunlight is a mixture of light of different wavelengths. Although we can see each as a separate color, combined they appear to be white. As a ray of sunlight enters a raindrop, its colored components are bent, or refracted, at different angles and then reflected off the raindrop’s inner surface. Then, as it leaves the raindrop, the light is bent once again. Red, the longest wavelength, is reflected to the highest or outermost arc: violet, the shortest wavelength, to the lowest or innermost arc; yellow and green, to arcs between the two.
