Research Paper

A lot of the sky is composed of violet but our eyes are not that sensitive to that color, so it appears blue. If the sky were examined with a spectrometer, you would notice the broadband of colors. There is blue light everywhere overhead and when that light then reaches your eyes; you see it everywhere above, making the sky appear blue. The sky might reveal two different colors of blue. The blue color gets lighter towards the horizon than the blue that you see when looking straight up to the sky. This is because we have many different particles in our atmosphere and when these particles are the same or even larger than the wavelength of the light that is already being reflected, a different scattering happens. These particles can be washed out by rain so the sky might be a darker blue following a rainstorm.

If there weren’t an atmosphere, the sky would appear black. Even at night the sky has a slight color. This can be from light sources in areas that get in the way of being able to see some of the starts and even planets. When someone is on the moon looking at earth, the sky is black because there is no atmosphere. When it is sunlight, the particles in the atmosphere are larger making it a short distance to get to your eyes but when it comes to sunset, the rays have much further to travel to get to your eye; possibility at more than 30 times. The light that is being received is missing the blues and violets that makes the sky blue during the day, and therefore you are left with the other shades like red, yellow and even purple.

With the dust particles and molecules that are in the air already, drops of water mend to these and that is the start to how clouds are formed. The air only has to be a little bit dirty for clouds to start forming. Even the cleanest air has some type of particles so clouds are able to form. They are condensing water vapor that clumps. Any moist air that is on the Earth’s surface is raised by heat into the atmosphere. Air pressure and temperature drop when this air is lifted. When it reaches the dew point, it condenses and clouds form. The clouds are white because the water drops that form them are bigger than the particles throughout the sky.

Clouds reflect visible colors and the one that reflect from the sun appear to be white, making the clouds white from the sun. It takes between a few minutes and one hour for a cloud to be formed. If a cloud is very cold it means that it is made up out of ice crystals. There are many types of cloud appearances. According to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration typical types of low clouds consist of cumulus that is individual globs that have a flat base and are usually the ones that form on sunny days along with stratus, stratocumulus and cumulonimbus. These are the ones that are changing outline and that make the fun shapes that can look like anything that you want them to be and also the ones that produce thunderstorms. Cloud bases for low clouds are up to 6,500 ft. Middle clouds consist of altostratus, altocumulus and nimbostratus. These cloud bases are at 6,500-23,000 ft. High clouds have bases of 16,000-50,000 that include cirrus, cirrostratus and cirrocumulus.

Clouds are grouped according to their altitude. They can also be written with symbols to identify exactly what cloud they are. When these clouds look very think and dark, they can produce rain and even snow. When a cloud is filled with a lot of molecules and seems super dark and thick, which means that the sunlight is not able to pass through making this seem like the clouds are very dark. To get deeper in identifying a cloud, there is the cloud level that is based on the altitude of the clouds base, which was talk about above. There is also visual opacity that is the thickness of the cloud and the amount of light that can be shown through the cloud whether opaque, translucent or transparent. Cloud cover is when you are estimating the percentage of the sky that the clouds are covering like if the sky is clear (0%-5%), partly cloudy (5%-50%), mostly cloudy (50%-95%), or overcast (95%-100%).

Clouds move with the wind, some travel at more than 100 miles per hour. When there might be a thunderstorm the clouds can travel usually at 30-40 miles an hour. As cloud drops merge, this is how rain gets produced; even though it takes many cloud drops to make a single drop. The large drops fall faster, interacting with the smaller drops and this can make the raindrops grow in size very fast.

Forms of water usually cause rainbows. Including but not limited to rain but also spray or mist. Often they are seen next to waterfalls or fountains even on a sunny day and can be best seen with polarized sunglasses. The size of the raindrops does not usually affect that rainbow, but if they are very tiny it could possibly reduce the brightness and result. They are usually caused by variety of light when the sun shines on droplets of water. The raindrops act like a prism, splitting the sun and the white light.

Each raindrop contributes one color to the rainbow. These rainbows are seen opposite the direction that the sun is in and the rain in the direction that the rainbow is in. However, it is not in an exact location in the sky, but depends on where whoever is viewing the rainbow is standing. The rainbow is only as far away as the rain is. There is also a possibility for a rainbow at night. It is very rare and people have seen it. The moon needs to be bright enough to be able to produce it and since it is not as bright as the sun, the rainbow itself would be much weaker than one that is normally produced by the sun. When things are dim, our eyes see them, as white and black, so a “moonbow” would look gray not a rainbow with color.

We know what forms a primary rainbow: rays of light are reflected inside the raindrop. This does not mean that all of the energy that is reflected for this one rainbow is now gone. It can be reflected again and will travel in a different path in the drop at a different angle. This is the secondary rainbow and when the rays are reflecting this time, the colors are also being reversed. There is also a possibility for three or more times, but they might be too close to the sun to actually see the full effect.

It also depends on the antisolar point. This is the point where an imaginary ray that connects yourself and the sun and then meets the sky. You are then able to tell where you can expect a rainbow to form. Many rays emerge smaller than the rainbow ray, but no light from internal reflections greater than it. There is a lot of light within the rainbow because all the colors are mixed together which makes it white. Newton created this understanding that this white light is a mixture of colored light and that each of them is refracted to a certain extent. That is why the inside of a rainbow is lighter than the sky around it. Not everyone sees the rainbow the same; the appearance is always changing because the raindrops that are making the rainbow are constantly in motion human color receptors vary from person to person making individuals see slightly different colors.

The rainbow consists of usually 7 colors; the outer layer red and the inside layer violet, not purple. There are also continuum colors that the naked eye cannot see. We are not able to see the full rainbow because the horizon gets in the way of a lot of the rain so we only see the arc. From an airplane full rainbows can be seen on cloud layers. When the sun is higher in the sky, rainbow has a smaller arch and contributes mostly red and yellow light. When the sun is lower, there is a larger arch and contributes blue and green light.

All the colors are created by different wavelengths of light. They are presented red, orange, yellow, green, blue, indigo, and violet. Red is usually at the top making this the longest wavelength. Then every color after loses some wavelength. This is also why colors appear different in our eyes. The colors are in a certain pattern, they never change and this is not just because of Mother Nature. The sunlight gets trapped in the drops and turns into different colors. They are colors from the entire spectrum and they are always the same order making the rainbows these colors too. Each color is next to another that is similar and by mixing two colors gives you one way of showing how the colors change. Colors have their place in the rainbow for a reason. When you see your rainbow with really sharp colors, hurry to the left side at the end and you are sure to find a pot of gold and a leprechaun.