What does it take to make a rainbow? Are there two points at which the rainbow touches the earth's surface? In this video for kids, you will learn all about the science behind how a rainbow forms. It takes three simple ingredients: light, water, and you!

Light is important because rainbows are actually made of light. The white light we see from the sun actually contains seven colors: red, orange, yellow, green, blue, indigo, and violet. When light enters a raindrop, it bends or refracts, and all the colors band together on the other side. That's what makes the light appear in a ribbon of color.

Rainbows appear in an arc shape. When the sun is low in the sky, the arc looks tall. When the sun is higher up, the arc of the rainbow is lower. But believe it or not, rainbows don't have an arc shape. It's an optical illusion! If you are in an airplane and you see a rainbow, it will be in a circular shape. All rainbows are circular.

Some rainbows appear at night, and we call these moonbows. Moonbows appear as a faint circle around the moon. They are usually not easy to see, and sometimes they even look white instead of colorful. There are also double rainbows and upside-down rainbows. Upside-down are very rare, and they actually only occur when light bends through the thin screen of tiny ice crystals high in the sky.

We hope you and your student(s) enjoyed learning about this beautiful natural phenomenon! If you want to learn even more, head over to our website and download one of our many lesson plans about rainbows and light, full of activities, worksheets, and more!

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What you will learn in What Is a Rainbow?:
0:00 Introduction
0:41 Importance of light for rainbows
1:24 Refraction of light
2:23 White light and the visible light spectrum
3:41 How rainbows work
4:20 Shape of a rainbow
5:21 Double and upside rainbows
6:33 Experiment time
7:03 Review of the facts

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