this post was submitted on 06 Jun 2024
42 points (92.0% liked)

No Stupid Questions

34333 readers
1670 users here now

No such thing. Ask away!

!nostupidquestions is a community dedicated to being helpful and answering each others' questions on various topics.

The rules for posting and commenting, besides the rules defined here for lemmy.world, are as follows:

Rules (interactive)


Rule 1- All posts must be legitimate questions. All post titles must include a question.

All posts must be legitimate questions, and all post titles must include a question. Questions that are joke or trolling questions, memes, song lyrics as title, etc. are not allowed here. See Rule 6 for all exceptions.



Rule 2- Your question subject cannot be illegal or NSFW material.

Your question subject cannot be illegal or NSFW material. You will be warned first, banned second.



Rule 3- Do not seek mental, medical and professional help here.

Do not seek mental, medical and professional help here. Breaking this rule will not get you or your post removed, but it will put you at risk, and possibly in danger.



Rule 4- No self promotion or upvote-farming of any kind.

That's it.



Rule 5- No baiting or sealioning or promoting an agenda.

Questions which, instead of being of an innocuous nature, are specifically intended (based on reports and in the opinion of our crack moderation team) to bait users into ideological wars on charged political topics will be removed and the authors warned - or banned - depending on severity.



Rule 6- Regarding META posts and joke questions.

Provided it is about the community itself, you may post non-question posts using the [META] tag on your post title.

On fridays, you are allowed to post meme and troll questions, on the condition that it's in text format only, and conforms with our other rules. These posts MUST include the [NSQ Friday] tag in their title.

If you post a serious question on friday and are looking only for legitimate answers, then please include the [Serious] tag on your post. Irrelevant replies will then be removed by moderators.



Rule 7- You can't intentionally annoy, mock, or harass other members.

If you intentionally annoy, mock, harass, or discriminate against any individual member, you will be removed.

Likewise, if you are a member, sympathiser or a resemblant of a movement that is known to largely hate, mock, discriminate against, and/or want to take lives of a group of people, and you were provably vocal about your hate, then you will be banned on sight.



Rule 8- All comments should try to stay relevant to their parent content.



Rule 9- Reposts from other platforms are not allowed.

Let everyone have their own content.



Rule 10- Majority of bots aren't allowed to participate here.



Credits

Our breathtaking icon was bestowed upon us by @Cevilia!

The greatest banner of all time: by @TheOneWithTheHair!

founded 1 year ago
MODERATORS
 

Now I know that rainbows are formed due to refraction of light from the sun hitting raindrops and light waves leave at varying angles between 40-42 degrees or somewhere around there. Also, that they’re round.

What I don’t understand is how it’s consistent, like I assume it’s hitting many raindrops, but all these drops are in different places so why does it still form a nice circle. Furthermore, why isn’t the whole sky a rainbow if it’s raining and thus hitting all the drops. I suspect the angle of the sun is playing a part but I’m not a science man.

Please help me get this thought out of my head.

you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
[–] SwearingRobin@lemmy.world 11 points 1 month ago (1 children)

You're almost there. It has to do with the angle of the sun and the water drops relating to the view point. Rainbows only show when the sun is behind you, and if you imagine a cone going out from the viewpoint outwards you get the possible paths of the rainbow (different radius different wavelength and therefore color)

A similar concept happens in certain reflective surfaces (metal pots and pans, car hoods and much more). You always see the tiny scratches in circles, but if you alter the angle in any way you keep seeing different scratch circles. This is because the circle you see in any given angle is the exactly the scratches that are turned just perfectly to reflect the light in the perfect way. It does not mean that the scratches you see at any given moment are the only ones. It means there are plenty, and only a few more visible at a time.

To me, playing around with the second concept (much easier to manipulate yourself and see) made me understand rainbows much better.

[–] dependencyinjection@discuss.tchncs.de 3 points 1 month ago (1 children)

Thanks.

I hadn’t considered the placement of the sun being behind me, but can confirm I was walking each when I saw a rainbow the other day, it was evening meaning the sun was setting in the west. So behind me.

Also, the scratches on cars is a god damn revelation to me and something I had no idea about. I will be playing around with looking at these now so thanks for bringing that up.

[–] SwearingRobin@lemmy.world 2 points 1 month ago (1 children)

Happy to help! Now what I don't get under this knowledge is double and triple rainbows. If anyone can explain that to me I would be very grateful.

[–] dependencyinjection@discuss.tchncs.de 1 points 1 month ago (1 children)

Sometimes the light reflects twice off the back of the raindrop; this leads to the secondary rainbow. The second reflection causes the order of the colors in the bow to reverse.

This seems to be the how sourced from Here

[–] SwearingRobin@lemmy.world 1 points 1 month ago

Thanks for the reply, it hasn't fully clicked yet, but I'll get there once I think about it some more.