Rainbows are defined as; “a bow or arc of prismatic colors appearing in the heavens opposite the sun and caused by the refraction and reflection of the sun's rays in drops of rain.”
Background: 2 long - 4 med paragraphs http://www.rebeccapaton.net/rainbows/facts.htm
Two of the most important people in “discovering” the rainbow and the understanding the science behind and explaining it are Sir Isaac Newton and Aristotle.
Sir Isaac Newton was born on January 4th, 1643, in Woolsthorpe, Lincolnshire, England. Newton was a mathematician and physicist who made multiple discoveries that are applicable today. Some of his most important discoveries being Newton’s Three Laws of Motion, Universal Gravitation, and Optics.
Aristotle Was born in 384 B.C. in Stagira, Greece. His parents were both members of traditional medical families. Unfortunately, his parents passed away when he was and the reason why at seventeen he went to Athens and enrolled in Plato’s Academy. Aristotle spent 20 years at the academy as a student and later on …show more content…
He discovered when sunlight hits a prism the prism is capable of splitting the sunlight into different colors, which is known as dispersion. Newton named the colors of the rainbow to be red, orange, yellow, green, blue, indigo, and violet. It’s believed that Newton included indigo because he wanted there to be seven colors in the rainbow because of his strong religious beliefs.
The first to really try to describe the rainbow was Aristotle. “He presumed that the rainbow was caused by reflection of sunlight in the clouds. The light was reflected at a certain angle. That means the rainbow consists of a cone of rays. Aristotle was thus the first to explain the rainbow's circular shape and that the rainbow is not located at a definite place on the sky, but is seen in a certain direction”