What is light? Brightness, electricity, light bulbs, fire
and energy are all different definitions of light. Sunlight travels 94 million
miles to Earth to provide us light! Light travels in waves and moves very
quickly, light travels at 186,000 miles per second. That is like walking around
the Earth’s circumference 7.5 times in the time it takes you to snap your
fingers!
Light waves travel in straight lines, including the sun’s
rays traveling towards Earth. Once these rays of light hit Earth’s atmosphere,
the protective layer of gasses surrounding Earth, these rays and intercepted
and scattered! We call this scattering of light the electromagnetic spectrum,
and the light is separated into a range of wavelengths and frequencies. Visible
light makes up a very small portion of the electromagnetic spectrum. The
remainder of the spectrum is light we cannot see, like x-rays and microwaves!
While visible light is a tiny portion of the electromagnetic
spectrum, we can divide this visible light into colors! ROY G BIV (red orange
yellow green blue indigo and violet) is an acronym that can help you remember
the colors of the light spectrum, or the colors in a rainbow! Rainbows occur when
visible light is refracted through water droplets in the atmosphere, most often
after a light rain, and this reflected light scatters into all the colors of
the light spectrum!
In today’s experiment of the day, you can make your very own rainbow! Get all your experiment supplies by visiting:
https://sciencemadefun.net/downloads/bubble_atmosphere.pdf
