Joanne Carraway Word Count: 499

Community Columnist

August submission

Anybody Needing a Rainbow?

Valuable life lessons can be learned from the rainbow. For example, the rainbow reinforces the adage that “Things are not always what they appear to be”—that our perception of reality and/or our vision can be limited, undeniably dependent upon intervention beyond our capability in order to produce truth.

Until Sir Isaac Newton, many brilliant minds were persuaded that the rainbow’s colors were derived from a “modification” of white light. It was Newton, however, who demonstrated through the use of a glass prism, that this was fallacy and that white light, itself, is actually composed of a spectrum of breathtakingly beautiful colors. Up until Newton, “Who’da thunk it?,” since anyone with a mental age of ten possessing deductive reasoning could surmise that white light was, well…white—plain and simple. No self-professed, enlightened, ante-twelfth-century person would have entertained the notion that all of those colors aggregated could possibly result in “white” but, then again, self-professed enlightenment has its own inherent flaws.

With Newton’s glass prism, a scientific concept was demonstrated: Refraction. That term almost sounds painful. I automatically associate “fracture” with it—much like a bone injury. The Encarta Online Dictionary gives the meaning of refraction as: “Change of direction of wave: the change in direction that occurs when a wave of energy such as light passes from one medium to another of a different density.”

In a rainbow the white light enters the water droplet, is refracted and reflected to the back of the droplet over a wide range of angles, whereupon it is refracted yet again and exits the droplet. The amount by which it is refracted depends upon the wavelength, i.e., the color. Different colors have different wavelengths. Noteworthy, however, is the fact that that even though the color blue is a shorter wavelength and is, therefore, refracted at a greater angle than the color red, blue is not the color at the top of the rainbow. It seems that there is a “focal point” at the back of the water droplet which causes the spectrum to “cross” itself, placing the color red at the rainbow’s top.

Since rainbows follow storms, I see many applications for our earthly journey and in dealing with the storms, whatever their form, which life hands to all mortals. Sometimes it takes a “storm” to help us see that things are not always what they appear to be—that truth, once hidden from the human eye, can be produced from the “refracting” and “reflecting” process. As a Christian, it is significant to me that there must first be a “cross” with the spectrum, followed by a “focal point,” i.e., a purpose, which culminates in the resplendent glory of the rainbow, the preeminent color, of course, being red.

For now, I encourage all the readers needing a rainbow to stay on rainbow alert! Your rainbow will appear in due time and it will be a thing of exquisite beauty—uniquely designed for your needs and viewing pleasure! After all, it’s been scientifically proven!