There’s more to rainbows than meets the eye read more at here www.spinonews.com/index.php/item/712-there-s-more-to-rainbows-than-meets-the-eye

Scientific understanding of rainbows highlights the many practical applications of fascinating interaction between light, liquid and gas.

Rainbow effects can warn of chemical contamination in the atmosphere, help to develop more efficient combustion engines and possibly even provide insight into the mechanics of reinforced concrete.

Alexander Haußmann from Institute of Applied Physics at the Technical University of Dresden, Germany, has reviewed the latest developments in the field of rainbow research. His article takes a comprehensive look at natural rainbows and touches on the many practical applications of this fascinating interaction between light, liquid and gas.

He studies rainbows for more than 20 years and points out; the patterns of scattered light can provide considerable clues to the size distribution and shape of raindrops falling during wet weather. If paired with radar data, this information could be used to quantify the amount of rainwater reaching the ground.

"If our analysis methods are precise enough, we can turn rainbows into optical remote sensing tools to study the physics of rain," he said.

His review challenges the simulating rainbows as mathematical modeling is an important tool for understanding of the field.

Some important points that add to the study, Rain drops are not exactly spherical, but become deformed into slightly flattened 'hamburger bun' shapes due to air drag as they fall through the sky. This has a drastic influence on the appearance of rainbows and makes scattering calculations numerically very demanding.

Rainbows are short-lived and special phenomena such as twinned bows are pretty rare, so it's important to always have your camera to hand.