Have you ever wondered where the rain comes from or how the clouds are formed?
Water Cycle:
When the sun heats up rivers and oceans water becomes water vapor and it rises up in the air. This process is called evaporation which is the first step of water cycle.
When the water vapor reaches up in the sky it turns into tiny droplets of water. These water droplets along with dust particles and various gasses that are present in the atmosphere come together to form clouds. This is known as condensation. For example if you hold a cold lid over the vessel in which you heated water. When you open the lid after sometime you’ll see the water droplets on the lid, that’s exactly what condensation is.
When the cloud becomes too heavy and it cannot hold anymore water inside (after certain saturation point) then it bursts open to give out rain, hails or snow. This is known as precipitation. As it rains the water gets collected in lakes, rivers and oceans. It even seeps through the soil and becomes ground water.
Thus water cycle is a continuous process of evaporation, condensation and precipitation.
How a rainbow is formed?
If you take a prism and flash a torch at it then it breaks a single beam of white light into several beams of light. White light is made up of 7 different colors.
Example:
Take a glass of water and place a mirror inside it. Make sure the room is completely dark. Now take a torch and flash it towards the mirror that you placed inside the glass. You will see a rainbow appearing from the angle of your mirror. Now place the paper and you’ll see 7 colors (VIBGYOR)
Now let’s see how the rainbow is formed.
The rain drops acts as small prisms and breaks the sun’s white light into a band of 7 colors and that is when you see a rainbow.
A rainbow can only be seen only when the Rain and Sun occur at the same time. A rainbow is actually a full circle but since we see it on the ground we generally see it as a semi-circle. Rainbows can be seen not just in rain but also in mist, spray, fog and dew.
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