You probably don’t understand how a rainbow really works. Get a little smarter every day with Brilliant. Visit https://brilliant.org/veritasium to get 20% off your annual premium subscription.
Special thanks to Mats Vermeeren.
00:00 Most people don’t understand rainbows
01:08 Light refraction explained
08:20 How does a rainbow form?
13:10 Circular rainbows
15:14 Why are rainbows curved?
17:30 Why can’t you see a rainbow with sunglasses?
18:43 Why is it brighter underneath a rainbow?
20:44 Different types of rainbow
23:46 Invention of the cloud chamber
▀▀▀
Join us on Patreon for early access videos, bonus content, and to support Veritasium! https://ve42.co/PatreonDE
Patrons: Adam Foreman, Albert Wenger, Alexander Tamas, Anton Ragin, Balkrishna Heroor, Bertrand Serlet, Bill Linder, Blake Byers, Bruce, Dave Kircher, David Johnston, Evgeny Skvortsov, Farbod Mansorian, Garrett Mueller, Gnare, Greg Scopel, I. H., John H. Austin, Jr., Juan Benet, KeyWestr, Kirill Shore, Kyi, Lee Redden, Marinus Kuivenhoven, Matthias Wrobel, Meekay, Michael Krugman, Orlando Bassotto, Paul Peijzel, Richard Sundvall, Sam Lutfi, Spilmann Reed, TTST, Tj Steyn, Ubiquity Ventures, gpoly, john kiehl, meg noah, wolfee
If you’re looking for a molecular modeling kit, try Snatoms, a kit I invented where the atoms snap together magnetically – https://ve42.co/SnatomsV
CORRECTION: We mistakenly used picture of the portrait artist Henry Tanworth Wells at 23:54. It should be a picture of CTR Wilson. Sorry! Thanks, @manicpixiedreambuoy, for pointing it out.
▀▀▀
References: https://ve42.co/RefsRainbows
▀▀▀
Directed by Pablo Rovetto and Derek Muller
Written by Pablo Rovetto and Derek Muller
Edited by Nick Lear and Trenton
Animated by Mike Radjabov, Ivy Tello, David Szakaly, Emma Wright and Fabio Albertelli
Filmed by Derek Muller
Additional research by Gabe Bean and Geeta Thakur
Produced by Pablo Rovetto, Derek Muller, Emily Zhang, Rob Beasley Spence and Tori Brittain
Thumbnail contributions by Jakub Misiek, Ren Hurley and Peter Sheppard
Additional video/photos supplied by Getty Images, Storyblocks
Music from Epidemic Sound
source
20:31 Rings of color….I was expecting rings of power
Best explanation I have ever seen.
Revelatory yet enigmatic at the same time. So well done. Derek you're a top ten all-time creator for me. Bravo to you and your team.
This video brought back memories of writing my undergraduate physics thesis on the mathematics of light scattering – 50 years ago! The complete theoretical understanding of rainbows and glories was only achieved in the 1970s (by H. M. Nussenzweig, not me). Your demonstrations are great, but your explanation of the glory is a little bit off. You suggest that edge rays – which impinge on the drop tangentially – travel halfway around the surface and are retroreflected back in the incident direction, giving rise to interference between rays on opposite sides of the drop. In fact, what happens is a little bit different. I don't remember the details, because I'm old, senile, confused, and out of touch. I sometimes mistake myself for other people. More attractive people. But, according to wikipedia,
"A theory by Brazilian physicist Herch Moysés Nussenzveig suggests that the light energy beamed back by a glory originates mostly from classical wave tunneling (synonymous in the paper to the evanescent wave coupling), which is an interaction between an evanescent light wave traveling along the surface of the drop and the waves inside the drop."
I taught high school physics for 25 years and I always tried to make sure I lived up to Paul Hewitt’s request: be sure you get to “rainbows” in the curriculum! Kinematics, Newton’s Laws, Energy, Momentum, Electricity and Magnetism…but always try to get to Rainbows and keep those young minds curious! 🌈 🌈!!
Great example of the Russian Doll nature of…nature.
Best video I've seen in a very long time! The visuals explain the phenomenon so accurately, and you tell the story so well and clear
just thought about it'.. when you rub a balloon on your hair, you get electromagnetism= electrical charge.. when you rub a rock against wood you get fire… it might be the same electromagnetism, and electrical charge in other words heat…. the friction causes electrical charge…wood does cause fire but is there a material that heats up but does not catch fire???
So, again the answer is 42.
“Your shadow is the center of your rainbow.” Pretty profound statement! (16:45)
And this is why a rainbow is supposedly "god's promise". There's no way the primitive minds of 2000 years ago could come up with this perfect explanation.
Masterpiece
well to be honest i still dunno why its curved after watching this video 🤪
You’re probably overdoing clickbait titles
👍
12:16 "so I've adjusted these sections so they all have the same scattering area"
How? Did you taper the light intensity by your "impact parameter"? How is that not cheating? Sunlight doesn't do that.
Eye opening! If you were falling 'with' the rain, would you see white light?
Turns out refracted light is gay
Thank you for this video. Truly amazing how majestic nature can be.
That guy said what I was thinking exactly 👍
At the part where you showed the Glory i was about to write a comment about how ive seen some of the most incredible scenes in the Scottish highlands while hillwalking.
Then you moved on to CRT Wilson! I guess our cloudy misty hills are perfect for spotting that illusion.
This is way too beautiful, good job sir
0:05 The son asked: Why are rainbows curved.
And the dad then holes up for weeks for the answer video.
Huh. I was told a rainbow is curved due to the Earth. It appears I was wrong.
This is the best explanation of rainbows ever! Most are just hand wavy.
Maybe a small follow on would be how opals work: scattering from individual silica spheres like rainbows or collective diffraction effect from periodic arrays of spheres, or both. Internet searching doesn’t clear this question up very well. Also, if diffraction then one would expect to be able to see Bragg diffraction rings from opals (analogous to Scherrer rings in X-ray diffraction from polycrystals) at least when I’ve tried this doesn’t work.
co-opting and obfuscating the correct explanation of rainbows by Miles Mathis is sad to see.
42 degree, Literally this was taught to us during IIT JEE examination prep