Rural School Leaflet 1095 



tree is struck. Although the noise of the wind, the thunder, the lightning, 

 the darkness of a severe thunderstorm, may seem truly terrifying, the 

 real danger is small, particularly if these few simple rules are observed. 



THE RAINBOW COLORS 



Have you ever seen a rainbow? Of course you have, and probably you 

 have tried to find the bag of gold that some folk say is buried where the 

 rainbow touches the earth. What is a rainbow? Of what and how is it 

 made? Did you ever see a rainbow when the sun was not shining? Did 

 you ever see one when it was not raining where you were standing, or not 

 far away? If you think a moment, I am sure you will say that you never 

 saw a rainbow except when the sun was shining and it was raining or 

 misting at the same time. So we may say that we are very sure that it 

 takes two things to make a rainbow — sunshine and raindrops. 



In a previous lesson we said that sunlight has in it all the colors that 

 you can think of except black, which is not a color at all. If this is true 

 there should be some way to separate, or sort, the different colors in sun- 

 light so that we can see them. Perhaps a rainbow is merely sunlight with 

 the colors sorted so that we can see them, and maybe the raindrops 

 sort the colors so that we can see how beautiful they are. How can 

 we find out whether sunlight and raindrops will make a rainbow? 



I will tell you how the great scientist, Sir Isaac Newton, found it out. 

 He made a very small hole in his window-shade so as to let in a little beam 

 of sunlight, and arranged a white screen so that the light fell on its center. 

 He then took a very small globe, or sphere, of glass filled with water 

 and placed it in the beam of sunlight; and there on the white screen, 

 instead of a white spot of sunlight, was a tiny rainbow. The little globe, 

 or sphere, of water sorted the colors in the little beam of sunlight and 

 made the rainbow on the screen. After this, Newton did not doubt that 

 sunlight shining through raindrops makes the rainbow. 



Do you know of anything besides raindrops that will sort the colors in 

 sunlight so that we may see them? It would not be easy to find a little 

 glass sphere, or globe, of water, like a raindrop, as Newton did, but a 

 three-cornered bottle filled with water will do as well. A three-sided 

 piece of glass, which is called a prism, will do better and is not so hard to 

 find. Perhaps your teacher has one or knows where you can get one. 

 Then pull down the window-shade, make a little hole in it as Newton did 

 in order to let in a beam of sunlight, and place a sheet of white paper so 

 that the beam of light will fall on the paper. Next, place the prism in 

 the beam of light, and you will see all the colors of the rainbow displayed 

 in their order. They will not be in the shape of a bow, because it takes 

 a sphere, or globe, to cast the colors as we see them in the rainbow. 



