Can you reduce the distance between yourself and a rainbow, for example by jumping on your bike and riding towards the rainbow. How far could you approach it? Or does that distance always remain the same (like a horizon)? How far is a rainbow then?
Answer
Hey, that’s a good parable: the rainbow is in an indeterminate place, kind of like the horizon. The apparent position of the rainbow is very far away (about infinitely distant), because each band of color appears to be at a fixed angle to the observer and the sun; stereoscopically, the rainbow is infinitely distant.
You could also argue that the rainbow is where the sunlight breaks into the raindrops. That’s a few 100 yards for a “real rainbow,” or maybe just a few yards for the rainbow you make in the jet of a garden hose.
Answered by
Engineer Bart Dierickx
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