How To Make Rainbows At Home
Please see Disclosure for more details. What Makes a Rainbow, Before we began our rainbow making adventures, I talked with Onetime a little bit about how sunlight is made up of many colours all put together. A rainbow appears when the light gets split up into its 7 different colours: red, orange, yellow, green, blue, indigo and violet.
Usually - the reason the light gets split up is because it is passing through a substance that bends the light. The different coloured wavelengths bend in different amounts. Red tends to bend the least, so it appears on the top of the rainbow, while violet bends the most and ends up on the bottom - with all the other colours in between.
Did you know that sometimes - rainbows appear at night too, Read this post to find out about Moonbows! In any case - we don’t need raindrops to make a rainbow. Let’s start with the easiest! Fill a large bowl or dish halfway with water and prop up a mirror inside it so that part of the mirror is under the water and part is out.
Place the rainbow maker near a sunny window with direct light coming in so that it hits the mirror (early morning or early evening light works best). Play around with holding a large white piece of paper above the maker to “catch” the rainbow. You might have to move a bit until you find it.
Play around with moving the paper closer to the mirror and then farther away to see how your rainbow changes! SAFETY NOTE: Just like you should never look directly into the sun, be sure that you do not look directly into the reflection from the mirror. It can damage your eyes. If you are at all concerned about this with your child, instead of using sunlight, try a darkened room with a strong light source instead.
When light goes through a glass of water - it also splits into a rainbow. To get ready - take a piece of paper and cut a slot into the middle of it. Tape this onto the side of a smooth/clear drinking glass so that the sun’s rays can pass through the opening onto the SURFACE of the water in the glass.
Make sure that the glass of water is VERY FULL. Place the glass on a white floor or white piece of paper, making sure the sun’s rays are shining through the slot in your paper and hitting the surface of the water. You should see a mini-rainbow appear below the glass!
Have your child describe the colours they see and you can talk about rainbows you have seen in the sky and how they are similar or different. If you’re lucky enough to have a crystal chandelier at home, or a hanging crystal decoration, you may not need to buy a prism.
We didn’t - so I picked one up at our local kids’ toy shop. Basically, all I did was place a large piece of white paper on the floor beside our living room window that lets in lots of direct sunlight in the morning. Onetime figured out pretty quickly that by moving it around, he could make a rainbow beam appear on the paper. He had lots of fun moving the prism in different ways and exploring how to change the size of the rainbow.
