Have you ever seen a rainbow?
Sometimes when the sun is shining and it is rainy somewhere at the same time, you can see a rainbow. It's a huge arch of colours in the sky. It's caused by the light from the sun being broken up by water droplets in the atmosphere. The sun's light is "white", but the water droplets break it up into seven different colours, always in this order:
RED
ORANGE
YELLOW
GREEN
BLUE
INDIGO
VIOLET
There is an easy way to remember them (a mnemonic):
- Richard Of York Gave Battle In Vain
These colours are the "visible" part of the sun's radiation. But there are many other parts that are not visible to the
human eye. For example:
- immediately below red is "infraRED"
- immediately beyond violet is "ultraVIOLET" (UV)
By Josef Essberger, Founder of EnglishClub
The Learning English Video Project
