Rainbow is a smile of heaven

Rainbow is one of the most amazing and beautiful phenomena of nature. From time immemorial, the timid smile of the human skies attracted him and helped him to believe in a miracle, in a fairy tale, in a dream. And while schoolchildren are asking the question: "Rainbow - this is what phenomenon?", Adults are not in a hurry to tell a complex scientific answer. It is much more pleasant to understand that this is a natural phenomenon - the embodiment of all colors of life, a symbol of hope, which certainly appears after a torrential rain, and therefore brings to this world a drop of joy and happiness.

Legends of the peoples of the world. The Divine Beginning

Ancient man saw in the arc-like color spectrum an exclusively divine beginning. So, in ancient Greece, the messenger of immortal celestials was the winged goddess of the rainbow Iris, on whose clothes, like drops of precious stones, dew-drops were poured. In ancient India believed that the rainbow is the bow of the supreme god-thunderer Indra. In China, this natural phenomenon was associated with the heavenly dragon, which combines yin and yang, heaven and earth. American Indians believed that the rainbow is a ladder to the other world; For the peoples of Africa - a snake, enveloping the ring of the globe and protecting a valuable treasure. In Scandinavian and Slavic mythology, the rainbow is a wonderful bridge that provides the connection between Heaven and Earth.

Physics or chemistry. The incomprehensible nature of the phenomenon

Children often ask their parents the question: "Is the rainbow a phenomenon, physical or chemical?" Adults, in turn, experience difficulty and do not know how to tell the child about the nature of the phenomenon in an accessible language. First of all, it is worth explaining to a little "why" that the sunlight consists of all the colors that are in the world. But to see the rainbow elements, you need a special object - a prism, which decomposes the color spectrum into separate color lines. In the rainbow in the role of the prism are raindrops, which change the sunbeam beyond recognition.

Thus, a rainbow is an atmospheric optical phenomenon that a person perceives as seven separate colors, namely red, orange, yellow, green, blue, blue, violet.

Burn to shine. Types of rainbow

Usually a person sees a rainbow in the form of a graceful arc, although in fact it has the shape of a circle. To view this natural phenomenon in all its glory is possible only from the side of the aircraft or at the top of the mountain.

But, in addition to the usual form, the rainbow can acquire and more extravagant. Thus, in the sky one can see the double "heavenly serpent", while the inner rainbow is always brighter than the outer one, since the latter is only a reflection of the first. To see such an unusual phenomenon, as a rule, to success, to the favor of Fortune and the fulfillment of cherished desires.

It is much less common to have an inverted rainbow. The reason for this natural phenomenon is a veil of cirrus clouds formed by ice crystals. It is interesting that the colors in this rainbow are arranged in the reverse order: from purple to red.

A colorless or white rainbow often appears during fog, consisting of drops of water. A similar natural phenomenon can appear in the sky and at night, when the sky is flooded with the bright light of the moon. Prism in this case is still rain.

It happens that the rainbow appears in the winter. Usually it happens on a frosty morning, when the air is filled with tiny ice crystals. But the rarest is a round-horizontal rainbow, which can only occur thanks to crystals in the form of a hexagon.

Memory training. The correct arrangement of colors in the rainbow

To remember the order of colors in the rainbow, it is enough to learn a simple saying, known to many since childhood. The initial letter of each word will prompt a shade that starts with the same letter. The child counts as follows: each hunter wants to know where the pheasant is sitting.