Moreover, the beauty and magnificence of the rainbow has granted it a special place in mythology. The Bible records a rainbow as a symbol of God’s covenant with His people. Moreover, rainbows also have religious significance! They are used to drive home various points during television shows and even in art, music and video games, wherein, they are used to symbolize something to come, something of the past or to convey a message. Rainbows are indeed a glorious sight to experience and are said to symbolize peace and jollity. Rainbows are curved as the set of raindrops has the right angle between the sun, observer, and the drop that lie on a cone that points at the sun.In “Meteorology Today”, author Donald Ahrens describes a rainbow as “one of the most spectacular light shows observed on earth”. 3)Why are rainbows curved and not straight? Since a rainbow is formed by the separation of light of its original combination of many wavelengths, and, black is no light, there cannot be a black rainbow. You can touch water particles and the refraction if you believe you can touch light and view the rainbow. So all said and done: Due to math, numerology, music, and a few great men of the past, there are seven colors in the rainbow today! Why Does The Rainbow Have 7 Colours FAQsĪ rainbow is a product of the reflection of light off the water particles in the air. As there are seven natural notes there should be seven principal colors too. He then revised the number to seven from five by adding indigo and orange as Pythagoras believed there was a strong connection between music and color. The spectrum was originally subdivided into five colors by him (red, blue, yellow, green, and purple). Newton acknowledged the Pythagoreans theory: Why Does The Rainbow Have 7 Colours? Newton further relied on Copernicus’ work while developing his own theory of gravity. This theory was known by Copernicus, who is credited for inventing the heliocentric theory of planetary motion. Philolaus, the Pythagorean philosopher was one of the first known to propose that the earth revolved around a ‘central fire’. So, how did it apply to the rainbow? The circular route from Newton to Pythagoras: He then added that he saw it as the sum of that of spiritual and that of the material.Īs he started school, his ideas espoused and grew into the philosophy that was called Pythagoreanism that was based on mysticism and mathematics! This theory was influenced by some of the most well-known classical thinkers which included Plato and Aristotle.Īnd now we have seven days of the week, seven deadly sins, seven wonders of the world, seven liberal arts subjects, and seven dwarves. The observation he made showed that seven was a magical number that connected to the disparate phenomena somehow. The theory involved how the seven heavenly bodies (known about at that time) moved according to the mathematical patterns.ĭo you notice a pattern? No? Well, Pythagoras did. He is known for discovering the seven musical notes that could be easily translated into mathematical equations for which he had a theory too. He loved numbers and also loved applying them to the phenomena of the real-world. This is because of the 6th century BC and an (in)famous philosopher named Pythagoras. Or, for those in the western cultures have been so told. But then, how many divisions should there be? Ancient Greece and the magic of seven: Why Does The Rainbow Have 7 Colours? So here, Sir Newton decided that probably by breaking this spectrum into chunks we could easily talk about the divisions. For a rather surprising factor, it is not a distinct set of colors but a spectrum. In this visual spectrum, one can notice that each color bleeds into the neighboring color. Great! So how does Sir Isaac come into this? In the 17th century, he was one to realize that when a white light breaks apart and is looked through a prism or raindrops, it breaks into a visual colored light spectrum. However, colors that we see are in light waves are combined according to the mixing method that uses red, green, and green as primary colors. Pigments are mixed using a well-known-understood-yet confusing subtractive method that uses red, blue, and yellow as primary colors. The Theory of Color is a bit more complicated than just stirring together the finger into paints, so let’s get started already! The visual spectrum – Why Does The Rainbow Have 7 Colours? OK, so who decides that now? And, why do they? Well, let’s just keep it short and say ‘Issac Newton. Now, the color Purple if we see is then divided amongst itself into the color Purple and blueish purple. Perhaps including the black and white paint that makes every other color imaginable concluding to be six basic colors. However, the teachers of elementary school tell us that there are three primary colors Red, Yellow, and Blue that when combined make three secondary colors Orange, Green, and Purple.
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