How Rainbows Are Made
A rainbow can form when both sunshine and water droplets are in the sky. Sunlight is white light, which is a mixture of all visible colors. As sunlight passes through the water droplets, it is bent and split into seven colors: red, orange, yellow, green, blue, indigo, and violet. You might be able to see a faint second rainbow above the main rainbow.
Do you see a faint second rainbow above the bright one? This is called a double rainbow. The upper rainbow has the colors in reverse order, so red is on the bottom and violet is on the top.
UCAR/Sharon Clark
You can make your own small rainbow using a garden hose or water sprinkler to form water droplets in the air on a sunny day. Try keeping the Sun behind you and the water droplets in front of you.
You can recall the rainbow colors and their order by remembering this: ROY G BIV.
The letters stand for the first letter of each color.
- R is for red.
- O is for orange.
- Y is for yellow.
- G is for green.
- B is for blue.
- I is for indigo.
- V is for violet.