A rainbow is an optical effect, a trick of the light, caused by the behaviour of light waves travelling through transparent water droplets towards an observer.
- Sunlight and raindrops are always present when a rainbow appears but without an observer, there is nothing, because eyes are needed to produce the visual experience.
- A rainbow isn’t an object in the sense that we understand physical things in the world around us. A rainbow is simply light caught up in raindrops.
- A rainbow has no fixed location. Where rainbows appear depends on where the observer is standing, the position of the Sun and where rain is falling.
- The exact paths of light through raindrops is so critical to the formation of rainbows that when two observers stand together their rainbows are produced by different sets of raindrops.