From time immemorial, the rainbow has been considered a symbol of joy and optimism. After all, what could be more joyful than seeing a bright multi-colored arc in the sky in the middle of the rain. This spectacle makes adults smile, and children are truly delighted. However, sometimes you really, really want to see a rainbow, but the rain just doesn’t come and doesn’t come, or, on the contrary, it rains non-stop, not letting a single ray of sunshine through.
It is for such cases that we have prepared several ways to make a rainbow yourself at home or in the yard.
Making a rainbow with a hose
This method is perhaps the most difficult and troublesome, but the rainbow turns out exactly like a real one. Adults can probably figure out how to make a rainbow this way, but for children it seems like real magic.
This experiment should be carried out outside on a sunny day. Place a special spray nozzle on the hose and direct the stream upward. The sun's rays will be refracted in small droplets, just as they do during rain, and you will see a rainbow.
If you don’t have a special nozzle, you can clamp the hose with your finger so that the water flows not in a massive stream, but in many small splashes. The same experiment can be carried out on a smaller scale, outdoors or even in the house, using an ordinary plant sprayer instead of a hose.
Rainbow using CD
Many children themselves know how to make a rainbow using an old CD. Well, if they don’t know, it’s time to show them this simple trick. To do this, you only need a disk and the sun's rays, or a flashlight. By the way, such a rainbow can be made even in the dark.
This effect can also be used in a photo shoot to take unusual, bright photos, for example, by directing rainbow highlights onto or near the model’s face.
You can make a garland from pieces of old CDs and hang it on the window so that the rainbow peeps into the room more often.
How to make a rainbow using a mirror
For this experiment you will need a clear bowl of water, a small mirror and a flashlight. If you take a sheet of white paper, the rainbow will be visible more clearly. Place the mirror in the water so that it is submerged and at an angle. Now position the bowl so that the sun's rays fall on the mirror, or shine it with a flashlight. Place a sheet of paper in front of the bowl. The light, reflected from the mirror, will refract in the water, and you will see beautiful rainbow highlights on the sheet.
These are the ways you can make a homemade rainbow even on the cloudiest day.
And finally, we invite you and your child to watch an interesting and understandable video about how a rainbow appears in the sky if the sunlight is white and the water drops are transparent.
Ekimova Valeria
Student of grade 2 “b” of State Budget Educational Institution Secondary School No. 1 of the Russian Federation, Chapaevsk
Evseeva Oksana Pavlovna
scientific supervisor, teacher of the highest category, primary school teacher, State Budgetary Educational Institution Secondary School No. 1
Russian Federation, Samara region, Chapaevsk
Very often we notice strange and unusual phenomena in nature. They capture our imagination and are remembered for a long time. Many of these amazing phenomena have already been explained by scientists, but continue to remain mysterious to us. I would classify a rainbow as such a phenomenon.
How is a rainbow formed? Is it possible to observe this beauty at home? What kind of rainbows are there? I have to find answers to these questions.
Object of my research- natural phenomenon RAINBOW.
I'm sure - the topic is relevant. After all, it is very important to understand how and why something happens that fascinates our eyes so much.
The purpose of my work- try to replicate such a natural phenomenon as a rainbow at home.
In my work I set myself the following tasks: 1. Find out under what conditions a rainbow appears. 2. Study what types of rainbows exist in nature. 3. Get acquainted with legends and myths, symbols and other aspects of people’s lives associated with the rainbow. 4. Using experiments, find out whether it is possible to reproduce a rainbow at home.
Research methods: analysis of publications and Internet materials on this topic; systematization and classification of the studied material; observation; experiment.
Meaning of the word "rainbow". Rainbow - God's arc, celestial arc - celestial phenomenon; a seven-color arc under the clouds, from the sun behind the rain. (V. Dahl's Dictionary).
Legends and myths. The ancient Greeks believed that the rainbow was the smile of the goddess Iris. And in the Bible, a rainbow appears after the global flood. In Armenian mythology, the rainbow is the belt of Tyre (originally the god of the sun, then the god of writing, arts and sciences). The Slavs believed that the rainbow drinks water from lakes, rivers and seas, and then rains down. Sometimes she swallows fish and frogs along with the water, so sometimes they fall from the sky.
History of the study. Why does such a beautiful color picture appear in the air? I looked for the answer to this question in additional literature and the Internet. Here's what I found out.
In 1672, Isaac Newton proved that the ordinary white color is a mixture of rays of different colors. “I darkened my room,” he wrote, “and made a very small hole in the shutter to admit an appropriate amount of sunlight.” In the path of the sun's ray, the scientist placed a special triangular piece of glass - a prism.
On the opposite wall he saw a multi-colored strip - a spectrum.
The word spectrum comes from the Latin “spectrum” - visible.
Newton explained this by saying that the prism decomposed the white color into its component colors. Then he placed another prism in the path of the multi-colored beam. With this, the scientist collected all the colors into one ordinary ray of sunlight. Moreover, initially Newton distinguished only five colors - red, yellow, green, blue and violet. But then, Newton added two more colors to the five listed colors of the spectrum - orange and indigo. He wanted to create a correspondence between the number of colors in the spectrum and the number of fundamental tones of the musical scale. Or maybe the number 7 had some other symbolic meaning for him. When it rains, there is a huge amount of water droplets in the air. The sun's rays pass through drops of water, white light is refracted and decomposed into 7 colors of the spectrum from red to violet.
Light refraction. Refraction of light is the change in the direction of propagation of light (light rays) when passing through the interface between two different transparent media (for example: air and water). An example of light refraction: if you lower a straw into a glass of liquid, it will seem curved to us due to the refraction of light (Fig. 1). Each drop of liquid becomes a tiny prism. Since there are a lot of prism droplets after rain, a rainbow appears in half the sky.
Drawing 1 . Refraction
Experience 1. I decided to make sure that the light consisted of seven colors. To do this, I tried to conduct an experiment. I cut out a circle with a radius of about 5 cm from cardboard. I divided the circle into 7 sectors. Each sector was painted with the desired color (like a rainbow) (Fig. 2). I made a small hole in the very center of the circle and inserted a toothpick into it. I got a top. I launched the top. As it rotated, it turned white. Why? This is the process of “picking” flowers. White color is the keeper of all colors on earth.
Drawing 2 . Spinning top - rainbow
Types of rainbows. A rainbow that appears after rain is a primary rainbow. Sometimes we may see an extra rainbow. In it, the colors follow in reverse order from purple to red. There might even be a third and fourth rainbow. Why does a second rainbow appear? Also due to the refraction and reflection of light in water droplets. But before turning into a “second rainbow,” the rays of sunlight have time to reflect twice, not once, from the inner surface of each droplet. On a bright moonlit night, you can also see a rainbow from the Moon. But the receptors of the human eye do not perceive colors in low night light, and the lunar rainbow looks whitish. The brighter the light, the more “colorful” the rainbow. Does a rainbow happen when rain is impossible - in frosty winter? It turns out that such a miracle also happens. In winter, ice crystals “float” in the air. They divide white into seven colors.
Experiment 1. Let's try to replicate the rainbow at home. For this I need spray as rain and sunbeam. We fill the spray bottle with water and on a sunny day we create a cloud of droplets in the air (Fig. 3). On them we see a rainbow (Fig. 4).
Drawing 3 . Cloud of drops
Drawing4 . Rainbow
Conclusion: You can get a rainbow at home, just like in nature. This occurs due to the refraction of the sun's ray in drops of water and its division into a spectrum.
Experiment 2. I needed a CD, a flashlight and a smooth surface (wall). I direct the flashlight beam at the disk. A rainbow appears on the wall! (Fig. 5).
Drawing 5 . Rainbow on the wall
Experiment 3. For the experiment, you needed a container with water, a mirror, a beam of light, and a smooth surface. I poured water into the basin. The mirror was placed so that one part of it was under water, and the other part was above it. I point the mirror towards a smooth surface. I direct the beam to different parts of the mirror so that the reflected light falls on the wall.
Conclusion: Rays of light hit the mirror and are reflected. But, passing through water, white light is refracted. As a result, we get a rainbow on the wall.
Drawing 6 . Passing through water, light is refracted
Experiment 4. To me I needed a solution for soap bubbles.
Figure 7. Rainbow patterns on soap bubbles
Conclusion: Thin films of soap on the surface of the bubble constantly move and refract light. We see constantly changing rainbow patterns (Fig. 7).
Based on the results of my work, I can draw the following conclusions. Rainbow can be obtained at home. An artificial light source can be used instead of a sunbeam. Rainbows can be observed not only during the day, but also at night, and even in winter. I achieved my goal - to learn about the rainbow and try to replicate it at home. I conducted experiments and proved that you can get the rainbow effect at home and at any time of the year you can admire this beautiful phenomenon, which still holds many mysteries. The results that I obtained from studying the rainbow should be interesting and useful to my classmates.
Bibliography:
- Bogdanov K.I. “It’s not so simple.”/ First of September - 2006, - No. 3. - p. 31-33.
- Burova S.A. Unusual natural phenomena./ September 1, 2003, No. 3.
- Geguzin Ya.E. Who makes the rainbow? - Kvant, 1988, No. 6.
- Family photo archive.
- Trifonov E.D. Once again about the rainbow. - Soros Educational Journal, - 2000, - vol. 6, - No. 7.
- [Electronic resource] - Access mode. - URL: ru.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rainbow.
- [Electronic resource] - Access mode. - URL: http://slovari.yandex.ru/dict/bse/article/00055/38400.htm.
Everyone likes the rainbow - both children and adults. Its colorful tints attract the eye, but its value is not limited to aesthetics alone: it is also a great way to interest a child in science and turn knowledge of the world into an exciting game! To do this, we invite parents to conduct several experiments with their children and get a real rainbow right at home.
In Newton's footsteps
In 1672, Isaac Newton proved that the ordinary white color is a mixture of rays of different colors. “I darkened my room,” he wrote, “and made a very small hole in the shutter to let in the sunlight.” In the path of the sun's ray, the scientist placed a special triangular piece of glass - a prism. On the opposite wall he saw a multi-colored strip, which he later called a spectrum. Newton explained this by saying that the prism split white light into its component colors. Then he placed another prism in the path of the multi-colored beam. With this, the scientist reassembled all the colors into one ordinary ray of sunlight.
To repeat the experiment of a scientist, you don’t necessarily need a prism - you can use what you have at hand. In good weather, place a glass of water on a table near a window on the sunny side of the room. Place a sheet of plain paper on the floor near the window so that the sun's rays fall on it. Wet the window with hot water. Then change the position of the glass and the sheet of paper until a small rainbow appears on the paper.
Rainbow from the looking glass
The experiment can also be carried out both in sunny and cloudy weather. To carry it out, you need a shallow bowl of water, a small mirror, a flashlight (if there is no sun outside the window) and a sheet of white paper. Immerse the mirror in water, and position the bowl itself so that the sun's rays fall on it (or point a flashlight at the mirror). If necessary, change the angle of objects. In water, light should refract and break into colors, so that a sheet of white paper can “catch” a small rainbow.
Chemical rainbow
Everyone knows that soap bubbles are rainbow-colored. The thickness of the walls of a soap bubble varies non-uniformly, constantly moving, so its color is constantly changing. For example, at a thickness of 230 nm the bubble turns orange, at 200 nm it turns green, and at 170 nm it turns blue. When, due to water evaporation, the thickness of the wall of a soap bubble becomes less than the wavelength of visible light, the bubble stops shimmering with rainbow colors and becomes almost invisible before bursting - this happens when the wall thickness is approximately 20-30 nm.
The same thing happens with gasoline. This substance does not mix with water, so when it ends up in a puddle on the road, it spreads over its surface and forms a thin film that creates beautiful rainbow stains. We owe this miracle to the so-called interference - or, more simply, the effect of light refraction.
Musical rainbow
Interference causes rainbow tints on the surface of compact discs. This, by the way, is one of the easiest ways to “harvest” rainbows at home. In the absence of sun, a table lamp or a flashlight will do, but in this case the rainbow will be less bright. Simply by changing the angle of the CD, you can get a rainbow stripe, a circular rainbow, and restless rainbow bunnies on a wall or any other surface.
Besides, what is not a good reason to teach your child the basics of musical literacy? After all, Newton initially distinguished only five colors in the rainbow (red, yellow, green, blue and violet), but then he added two more - orange and violet. Thus, the scientist wanted to create a correspondence between the number of colors in the spectrum and the number of notes in the musical scale.
Projector night light
If a temporary solution is not enough for you, you can have a rainbow at home “for real” - for example, using such a miniature projector. It projects a rainbow onto the walls and ceiling - even at night, even on a cloudy day, when invigorating colors are so lacking... The projector can operate in two modes: all colors together, or each separately. On the eve of the New Year holidays, this is perhaps a good gift idea for a child or just a creative person.
Window hanging
Another option for a “rainbow without worries” (which, however, can only be enjoyed during daylight hours, and only in sunny weather) is the so-called rainbow disk, made using modern laser technologies. A glass prism measuring 10 centimeters in diameter is enclosed in a chrome plastic body. It is attached to the window using a suction cup and, transforming sunlight, projects it onto the walls, floor and ceiling of the room. There are 48 color lines in total: red, orange, yellow, green, blue, indigo, purple and everything in between.
Flip book with 3D effect
In the last few years, books with interesting and unusual effects have begun to appear - for example, “flip books” with running pictures. Many of us are familiar with this technology from our own childhood: we drew pictures in the margins of a notebook, and then brought them to life by quickly flipping through the pages. A book based on the principle of this fun was created by Japanese designer Masashi Kawamura. If you quickly flip through it, you can see a voluminous rainbow!
If you wish, you can make a similar handmade rainbow with your own hands, and at the same time clearly demonstrate the animation effect to your child. To do this, you need to print on paper or draw squares of rainbow colors on each page of your notebook. In total you need 30-40 sheets. It is important to take into account that on one side of each page you need to draw them in the usual sequence, and on the other - in the reverse order, otherwise you will not get a rainbow.
Rainbow you can touch
And another fun way to get a rainbow, which will greatly decorate any modern interior, without taking up a centimeter of space and filling it with rainbow radiance. To do this, Mexican designer Gabriel Dawe suggests using skillfully stretched sewing threads. Of course, you will have to tinker with such an installation for an hour or two, but the result is worth it. It is not for nothing that the artist’s works have been a huge success in many countries, including the USA, Belgium, Canada and the UK.
On a gloomy autumn day you just want to please yourself with something bright and unusual. You will be surprised, but sometimes colored paper can work wonders if you approach it creatively. So, let's begin. For the rainbow you will need seven colors of paper, scissors, cotton wool (it will make two cute clouds), a stapler, glue, silver beads and thread or fishing line.
First you need to cut seven strips of the same width, but slightly different in length (approximately 6-7 mm).
We fasten the strips with a stapler on one side.
Then we align the edges on the other side and get a rainbow blank.
Now you need to make clouds from cotton wool. The secret is to lightly wet your fingers with water and form two clouds that you glue to the ends of the rainbow.
Now it's the droplets' turn. We will cut them out of blue paper as shown in the photo. We will need three droplets.
At the bottom of the thread we attach a silver bead. Glue the three cut out droplets together, not forgetting to glue a thread in the middle.
That's it, our rainbow is ready. You can give it to someone, or you can just hang it on a chandelier or on a window and enjoy.
In addition, I can give you a few more ideas for a brighter mood.
You don't have to wait until the storm passes to see a rainbow. We'll tell you how to do it at home. Children will definitely like this one. In addition, using his example, you can clearly explain to your child how a rainbow appears in the sky.
Cool days are the best time to spend time with your child. Children really like various experiments, and with their help it is very easy to explain physical, chemical and natural phenomena. We offer, with the help of which everyone can clearly learn the principle of the formation of a rainbow.
Children love to draw a rainbow and depict it with the brightest colors. When the sun comes out during rain, the sunlight is refracted in the water droplets and “breaks up” into several colors. Everyone knows that there are seven colors of the rainbow and they are arranged in strict sequence: red — orange — yellow — green — blue — blue — violet .
But to see all the colors of the rainbow, you shouldn’t look out the rain outside the window. You can make a rainbow with your own hands at home. How? Now we will tell you everything.
To make your own rainbow, you will need:
- Small vessel (saucepan)
- Solar light or electric
- White surface or sheet of paper
- Mirror
How to make a rainbow with your own hands
1. Fill a small bowl halfway with water.
2. Place a mirror in the water at an angle.
3. Direct the light from the flashlight into the water where the mirror goes under it (or, if you prefer to do the experiment with daylight, take the vessel outside and place it so that the rays hit the mirror under the water).
4. Hold a white sheet of paper over the mirror, adjusting the angle so that a rainbow appears.
How a rainbow is formed: the principle of refraction
Of course, your mini-rainbow is different from the one that appears in the sky after rain, but they have the same basic color characteristics. Why? Your demo version of the rainbow and the original work on the same principle: refraction and reflection.
Refraction is the bending of light as it passes through a different medium, such as glass or water. Refraction can even cause the clock hands to go backwards when viewed through a glass of water.
When you shine a light beam from a flashlight (or white light coming from the sun) into water, the light bends. But white light is not made up of just one color - it is a combination of all visible colors. Therefore, when white light is bent, all of its components (red, orange, yellow, green, blue and indigo) are also bent. Each of these colors does this at a different angle because each color moves at a different speed within the water or glass.
When you reflect light from water using a mirror, you are reflecting white light that is broken down (from refraction) into a full spectrum of colors. This is how a rainbow appears!
The appearance of a rainbow after the rain
When a rainbow forms in the sky, the same principle applies. Millions of small drops of water refract sunlight. The angle at which we view these drops of water determines what color we see in them.
Experiment with your child and see where else you can see all the colors of the rainbow. Maybe in a drop of water in the garden or on a CD? Explaining natural phenomena using specific examples will help the child better understand scientific information that is still difficult for him.