Ever Trap For Rainbows

Jeremy Hsu's article, “Scientists Create First Ever Trap for Rainbows” (2009), asserts that anyone can capture rainbows. Hsu makes this argument by explaining how scientists have manipulated lens and other materials, such as glass, varying in thickness, size, and optical coating, to capture a rainbow when a laser beam was shone through it. Hsu’s motive is to inform readers of this discovery, which involves a rainbow, an optical phenomenon that has amazed people for several generations, in order to allow them to experiment with it themselves and to be aware of that it could be of potential use in the future. Bearing in mind the language Hsu uses in the article and the essence of the topic, he predominantly writes for an audience of students …show more content…
The water droplets act as prisms because the white light that enters them separate into a spectrum of colours when the light exits and this exhibits the process of dispersion. The spectrum of colours come in the order of red, orange, yellow, green, blue, indigo, and violet, shortly referred to as ROYGBIV, from top to bottom and appear in this order because of their wavelengths, which vary from 400 nm (nanometre or 10-9 m) to 700 nm as shown in the electromagnetic spectrum. In a primary rainbow, which is when light reflects a single time within the water droplet, red appears at the top of the rainbow because it has the longest wavelength, which is 700 nm, and is refracted the least when white light passes through the water droplets. Violet appears at the bottom of the rainbow because it has the shortest wavelength, which is 400 nm, and is refracted the most when white light passes through the water droplets. Red light exits the water droplet at an angle of 42 degrees and violet light exits the water droplet at an angle of 40 degrees. However, the order of the colours in a rainbow can be