RainbowSpec

All about rainbows, color, and light!

This site intends to cover topics on rainbows, light, and color. As such it reaches into physics and chemistry, however it aims to be both beginner friendly and indepth.

Recommended first page: The Visible Spectrum

Sitemap

Basic Pages

• Home (you're here!)
• About and Contact

Core Concepts

• The Visible Spectrum
• What Determines Color
• Primary Colors
• Prisms

Rainbows

• Primary Rainbows
• Secondary Rainbows
• Supernumerary Rainbows
• Reflection and Split Rainbows
• Fogbows and Cloudbows
• Corona and Cloud Irridecence

Future pages:

• the 3 cones and color vision
• sun halos
• glories
• thin film interference
• diffraction gratings

Recommended Sites

• AtOpt - Atmospheric Optics - incredible older HTML site about rainbows and ice halos! Large inspiration for this site, which attempts to connect atmospheric rainbows to other manifestations of the visible spectrum. Although a great resource, it can be difficult to navigate to related pages, so hopefully this site will be a little more organized.
• HueValueChroma - The Dimensions of Colour - old site absolutely packed with information on how humans interpret color, covers both scientific theory and artistic applications
• Rainbows, Halos, Coronas, and Glories - PDF covering the same topics explained by AtOpt, but all in a single PDF
• HyperPhysics: Light and Vision - old physics HTML site, this section covers many topics relevant to rainbows and the visible spectrum
• The Physics Classroom: Light Waves and Color - another physics site that has good explainations on related concepts
• Physically-Based Simulation of Rainbows - Research paper - funded by Disney for representing rainbows in their 3D films, but covers incredibly valuable information on the physics behind rainbows
• Philip Laven: The optics of a water drop - important researcher on the physics of rainbows, lots of physics calculations and graphs

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