How to See a Rainbow

• A light source is a natural or man-made object that emits one or more wavelengths of light.
• Natural light sources include:
  • The Sun is the most important natural light source in our lives and emits every wavelength of light in the visible spectrum.
  • Celestial sources of light include other stars, comets and meteors.
  • Other natural sources of light include lightning, volcanoes and forest fires.
• There are also bio-luminescent light sources including some species of fish and insects as well as types of bacteria and algae.
• Man-made light sources include:
  • Man-made light sources of the most simple type include natural tars and resins, wax candles, lamps that burn oil, fats or paraffin and gas lamps
  • Tungsten lights: These are a type of incandescent source which means they radiate light when electricity is used to heat a filament inside a glass bulb.
  • Halogen bulbs: These are more efficient and long-lasting versions of incandescent tungsten lamps and produce a very uniform bright light throughout the bulb’s lifetime.
  • Fluorescent lights: These are non-incandescent sources of light. They generally work by passing electricity through a glass tube of gas such as mercury, neon, argon or xenon instead of a filament. Fluorescent lamps are very efficient at emitting visible light, produce less waste heat, and typically last much longer than incandescent lamps.
  • LED lights: An LED (Light Emitting Diode) is an electroluminescent light source. It produces light by passing an electrical charge across the junction of a semiconductor. An LED light typically emits a single colour of light which is composed of a very narrow range of wavelengths.
• Made-made lights can emit a single wavelength, bands of wavelengths or combinations of wavelengths.

Refraction refers to the way that electromagnetic radiation (light) changes speed and direction as it travels across the interface between one transparent medium and another.

• As light travels from a fast medium such as air to a slow medium such as water it bends toward the normal and slows down.
• As light passes from a slow medium such as diamond to a faster medium such as glass it bends away from the normal and speeds up.
• In a diagram illustrating optical phenomena like refraction or reflection, the normal is a line drawn at right angles to the boundary between two media.
• A fast (optically rare) medium is one that obstructs light less than a slow medium.
• A slow (optically dense) medium is one that obstructs light more than a fast medium.
• The speed at which light travels through a given medium is expressed by its index of refraction.
• If we want to know in which direction light will bend at the boundary between transparent media we need to know:

• Which is the faster, less optically dense (rare) medium with a smaller refractive index?
• Which is the slower, more optically dense medium with the higher refractive index?

• The amount that refraction causes light to change direction, and its path to bend, is dealt with by Snell’s law.
• Snell’s law considers the relationship between the angle of incidence, the angle of refraction and the refractive indices (plural of index) of the media on both sides of the boundary. If three of the four variables are known, then Snell’s law can calculate the fourth.

A human observer is a person who engages in observation by watching things.

• In the presence of visible light, an observer perceives colour because the retina at the back of the human eye is sensitive to wavelengths of light that fall within the visible part of the electromagnetic spectrum.
• The visual experience of colour is associated with words such as red, blue, yellow, etc.
• The retina’s response to visible light can be fully described in terms of wavelength, frequency and brightness.
• Other properties of the world around us must be inferred from patterns of light.