1st Post
What is the first thing that comes to your mind when you hear the word rainbow? An arc of seven prismatic vibrant colours, that’s the first thing that you think or visualize in your head. Since childhood, we all have personified the rainbow to magic, heaven or fairylands. Be it a child, a teen, a mediocre or an aged elderly, seeing a rainbow still leaves anyone awestruck and that ingenuous smile somehow just emerges on your face.
The pure delight that one feels upon seeing a rainbow prompts the significance of childhood and realize how time has passed by.
If we talk science, a rainbow is an optical phenomenon and doesn’t really exist. It is caused by the reflection, refraction and dispersion of water droplets when light falls upon them. When sunlight falls upon a raindrop, some light is reflected and the remaining part of the light is absorbed by the droplet. The remaining light is refracted at the surface of the raindrop and is internally reflected. This phenomenon continues until the internal reflection reaches a range between 0° to 42° fanning out a wide range of the spectrum, resulting in a beguile Rainbow.
Forging ahead, a rainbow is not only an optical illusion or an unbridled admiration of nature but there are numerous facts that make the prismatic band of colors extraordinarily unique and enigmatic in its own ways. Let’s read what are the 13 reasons why the rainbow is a bag of mystery!
13 reasons why the rainbow is a true mystery.
Arc or circle?
When one views a rainbow, all he or she can see is an arc of seven vibrant colors beginning from a point and fading endlessly. Here’s when optical illusion hits us hard! The rainbow is a circle when viewed from the top of the sky from a plane or helicopter. If you are lucky enough you can watch a full circle rainbow while skydiving too!
What to believe? Science or Folklore?
According to an old European belief, if a man or a woman passes through a rainbow, then he or she shall be transmogrified into the opposite gender as a result of their karma. They say if you reach the end of the rainbow, a pot of gaudy and lustrous gold awaits you.
While these are the beliefs that we have been hearing since childhood, scientists find it hard to comprehend and state the contrary, i.e. an optical illusion.
Let’s find out what is present at end of the rainbow.
It’s heartbreaking to know that you might never find a pot of gold once you reach the end of a rainbow because there is no end. As one move, so does the rainbow that you see. Just like a mirage, the optical illusion phenomenon works here as well! The raindrops that cause the rainbow when sunlight falls upon them, are located at different places in the air because of which when one moves close towards the rainbow, the exact same distance the rainbow moves away. That leaves you exactly where you started.
Indeed looks are deceptive!
Perspectives and Views are similar triangles.
Just like opinions and perspectives vary from individual to individual, similarly one’s outlook while watching a rainbow may vary from individual to individual. So the next time you see a person standing beneath a rainbow, that person might see the rainbow from a different angle. Strangely interesting, even our eyes don’t see the same rainbow, each eye views it from a different angle.
Rainbows at night as well?
Yes, some dreamy magical night, you might just come across a rainbow. A rainbow is formed wherever there are water droplet and shiny light. Be it a fog, a mist, sea spray or even a waterfall, a rainbow can occur anywhere amidst the daylight or in the night where the angles are conducive. Fan of the Unicorns? Look for them where a moonbow is formed.
Do double rainbows exist?
Just like the formation of a single rainbow, a double rainbow is formed under the same conditions. When light falls on a water droplet, part of it is reflected and rest is refracted. The refracted light strikes at the back surface of the droplet and is internally reflected producing an arc of the spectrum. In case of a double rainbow, the sunlight is reflected twice within a raindrop.
Alexander’s Band
Talking about a double rainbow, our curious minds must think what is in between the rainbow and its double. The light that reflects rain droplets in the area between the rainbow and it’s double does not reach the observer, therefore making this part of the sky darker. Alexander of Aphrodisias was the first to discover this part in 200 A D, hence naming it the Alexander’s Band.
Rainbow and its types
There are approximately nine types of rainbows. To name a few, Primary, Supernumerary, Monochrome, Multiple and Twin rainbows are common types of rainbows.
Newton and his discovery.
It was Sir Isaac Newton that first discovered that sunlight splits into its component colors when falls upon a prism and identified the 7 candy colors in a rainbow – VIBGYOR.
Rainbow, not an object!
Since optical illusion is a major phenomenon in the creation of a rainbow, here’s another fact, a rainbow can never be physically touched or approached.
Rainbow with its history.
Initially, the rainbow was not considered to have 7 colors. Aristotle discovered that the rainbow contains three colors and no other color. An addition to the discovery was made when it was decided that the rainbow contains four colors during the Renaissance period. While the west thinkers took the rainbow to be of five colors – red, yellow, green, blue and purple by the 17th century. René Descartes discovered that the sunlight splits into different colors by rain and forms a rainbow in the year 1637. The seven colors were given by Sir Isaac Newton in the year 1666, by adding indigo and orange to the earlier five colors.
Longest Rainbow
On March 14, 1994, in Sheffield, England, the world’s longest observed rainbow was seen from 9 in the morning till 3 in the afternoon.
2nd post:
Reality be told, there are innumerable weird US small towns that didn’t make this catalog, some of them which comprise Hollywood, Portland, and fate. On the other hand, are infamous for their stark peculiarity. If you’ve ever desired to trek America in hunt of the silliest, miserable, and most unhinged of all the states, imagine this journey guide to the strangest small towns in America.
As I can say there are too many towns out there in America, and much more weird as compared to any other towns in the city. So let us have a look on some of them
In 1981, there were 1,000 people living in Centralia, PA. By 2010, there were fewer than a dozen. What happened? Well, there’s been a coal mine fire on fire beneath the town since 1962. Sinkholes, poisonous burn, gas—the thoroughfare itself is hot to the touch. Inhabitants it seems that couldn’t matter. Still though it’s been on fire for decades, specialist believes that it may burn for another 250 years.
If, for a few strange reasons, this sounds like a place where you’d like to live, you can’t. In 1992, the condition of Pennsylvania held all the belongings in the city and inevitable it. They permissible the then-current people to wait, but just the once they’re gone, that’ll be the end of Centralia.
- Colma, California
Colma, California has been pet named as “The City of Souls”. The tiny town that is approximately two open area miles brags 17 graveyards. The existing populace of Colma is merely about 1200, while there are a predictable 2,000,000 lifeless bodies. Coma is still the concluding sleeping place of Wyatt Earp.
2. Roswell, New Mexico
For the rest of documented history, Roswell, New Mexico will be the residence base for those seems to verify that there is alien life. In 1947, the populace living in Roswell maintains to see what they named a “UFO crash”. The military asserted that it was just a climate balloon crash, but that did nothing other than blaze a series of scheme assumptions that carry on to stay living today.
3. Hildale, Utah
Have you ever desired to get wedded to more than one lady at the same point in time? Fine if that’s how you wish for to reside your days, Hildale, Utah is the place for you. It is the Mormon stronghold, and house of the Fundamentalist Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints. Polygamy runs out of control here, and if you are a stranger passing through, don’t wait for a reasonable greeting.
4. Miracle Village, Florida
Miracle Village, the little accommodation growth doubling as its own town outside of Pahokee, is home to over 100 registered sex-offenders. The town was founded by Richard Witherow, a minister who spent 30 years functioning in jails. Witherow and his office have the most recent say on everybody who exists there.
