The Riddle of the Rainbow
From Early Legends and Symbolism to the Secrets of Light and Colour
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In which the author makes the case for our perennial fascination with rainbows.
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In which we familiarise ourselves with the rainbow’s principal features and learn that its many permutations are variations on theme of the interaction between sunlight and drops of water.
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In which we survey myths about rainbows in which it is regarded either as a form of divine communication, a bridge between this world and the next or a malevolent serpent or dragon.
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In which we trace the several attempts to explain the rainbow by natural philosophers such as Thomas Harriot, Johannes Kepler and Marco de Dominis during the first half of the 17th C, which culminated in René ...
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In which we expose the limitations of Newton’s ideas about light and consider the how discoveries by Francesco Grimaldi and the work of Christiaan Huygens led to the wave theory of light.
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In which we learn of Michael Faraday’s electrical discoveries and how they led to James Clerk Maxwell’s revolutionary electromagnetic theory of light and the demise of Newtonian physics.
Book
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is an acknowledgement that the rainbow is the embodiment of wonder has stood the test of time. In which we learn about the attempts to explain the rainbow along scientific lines from Ancient Greece in 600...
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In which we describe and explain rare and unusual rainbows and dwell on the several ways of thinking about rainbows and conclude that we are the only creatures capable of seeing them.
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In which we survey Newton’s ideas on light and colour and learn how he used these to improve on Descartes’ explanation of the rainbow, and asses the contributions to this project by Robert Hooke and Edmund Hal...
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In which we retrace the steps that led Thomas Young and Augustin Fresnel to the wave theory of light and find out how it explained (almost) every feature of the rainbow.