In the video the teacher said that the clouds are white as the contain droplets of water and refract all colours equally. Shouldn’t a rainbow also be white as it is formed by splitting of white light by water droplets
Thangs and regards
In the video the teacher said that the clouds are white as the contain droplets of water and refract all colours equally. Shouldn’t a rainbow also be white as it is formed by splitting of white light by water droplets
Thangs and regards
Clouds are white because light from the sun is white. As light passes through a cloud, it interacts with the water droplets, which are much bigger than the atmospheric particles that exist in the sky.
When sunlight reaches an atmospheric particle in the sky, blue light is scattered away more strongly than other colours, giving the impression that the sky is blue.
But in a cloud, sunlight is scattered by much larger water droplets. These scatter all colours almost equally meaning that the sunlight continues to remain white and so making the clouds appear white against the background of the blue sky.
Bigger particles like water droplets within a cloud scatter all wavelengths with roughly the same effectiveness. If we consider that there are millions of water droplets in a cloud, the scattered light interacts and combines to generate a white colour.
The formation of a rainbow is a combined effect of :
- Dispersion
- Refraction
- Reflection
of sunlight by spherical water droplets of rain.
Conditions to observe a rainbow: The sun should be shining in one part of the sky while it is raining in the opposite side of the sky.
- STEP 1 As sunlight enters the raindrop, it gets refracted. The components with larger wavelengths are deviated the least while the components with smaller wavelengths are deviated the most.
- STEP 2 These component rays then strike the inner surface of the water droplet. If the angle made by the refracted ray and the normal to the spherical drop surface is more than the critical angle (48 degrees in this case), the refracted rays then get “internally reflected”.
- STEP 3 These reflected rays then get refracted again as these reflected rays come out of the spherical drop of water.
THUS HERE THE DIFFERENCE OCCURS BECAUSE DIFFERENT COMPONENTS ARE DEVIATED AT DIFFERENT WAVELENGHTS INSIDE A RAINDROP THUS RESULTING IN VARIOUS COLORS, WHILE A CLOUD SCATTERS ALL WAVELENGTHS IN THE SAME EFFECTIVENESS.
ALSO rainbow DOES appear on the clouds, few and far between. But they don’t call it as rainbows. The meteorological terminology for that phenomenon is Iridescence, and the clouds are Iridescent clouds.
Clouds are white because light from the sun is white. As light passes through a cloud, it interacts with the water droplets, which are much bigger than the atmospheric particles that exist in the sky.
When sunlight reaches an atmospheric particle in the sky, blue light is scattered away more strongly than other colours, giving the impression that the sky is blue.
But in a cloud, sunlight is scattered by much larger water droplets. These scatter all colours almost equally meaning that the sunlight continues to remain white and so making the clouds appear white against the background of the blue sky.
Bigger particles like water droplets within a cloud scatter all wavelengths with roughly the same effectiveness. If we consider that there are millions of water droplets in a cloud, the scattered light interacts and combines to generate a white colour.
The formation of a rainbow is a combined effect of :
- Dispersion
- Refraction
- Reflection
of sunlight by spherical water droplets of rain.
Conditions to observe a rainbow: The sun should be shining in one part of the sky while it is raining in the opposite side of the sky.
- STEP 1 As sunlight enters the raindrop, it gets refracted. The components with larger wavelengths are deviated the least while the components with smaller wavelengths are deviated the most.
- STEP 2 These component rays then strike the inner surface of the water droplet. If the angle made by the refracted ray and the normal to the spherical drop surface is more than the critical angle (48 degrees in this case), the refracted rays then get “internally reflected”.
- STEP 3 These reflected rays then get refracted again as these reflected rays come out of the spherical drop of water.
THUS HERE THE DIFFERENCE OCCURS BECAUSE DIFFERENT COMPONENTS ARE DEVIATED AT DIFFERENT WAVELENGHTS INSIDE A RAINDROP THUS RESULTING IN VARIOUS COLORS, WHILE A CLOUD SCATTERS ALL WAVELENGTHS IN THE SAME EFFECTIVENESS.
ALSO rainbow DOES appear on the clouds, few and far between. But they don’t call it as rainbows. The meteorological terminology for that phenomenon is Iridescence, and the clouds are Iridescent clouds.
