Full featured double rainbow in Wrangell-St. Elias National Park, Alaska Source: English Wikipedia Polarized light is; an electromagnetic wave which travels through the vacuum of outer space. Light waves are produced by vibrating electric charges. An electromagnetic wave is a oblique wave which has both an electric and a magnetic component. Is the light from a rainbow polarized? Absolutely! Rainbows are the most unique displays that can be seen in the sky. We all love a rainbow after a rain shower! We love a rainbow for all of its colors and how it magically appears in the sky, and somewhere at the end of that rainbow is a pot o gold! When you find it let me know. A rainbow has a perfect geometrical shape to it set in the background of fluffy clouds. The reason that a rainbow will appear after a rain shower is that the drops of water alter the course of a wave of energy (light) that passes into the air and reflects the sun rays; from the sun backwards at 42deg from the incoming rays. The rainbow is then seen in a direction opposite of the sun as a circle of that radius, an angular size which is independant of your distance to the raindrops. The same thing happens when you use your garden hose. No matter how much you step back, you will not be able to see its full diameter in your photograph. You would need a very wide angle lens for that.

Posted by Tammy Watkins at 1:15 PM Read Article

1 Comments:

Anonymous wrote (@ 6:55 AM):

Actually natural light such as what casues a rainbow is not polarized, it is random. A rainbow is formed by light striking many droplets of rain and each droplet refracting the light like a prism separating the light into it's different colors. Random light has it's wave vibrations randomly oriented around the axis of propagation. Polarized light has the wave vibrations in one plane along propagation axis.