A rainbow is merely a large band of parallel stripes, blended at the rims, which displays the full spectrum of colors that make up the sun's white light. This brilliant display appears to the naked eye when the sun's light breaks up as it passes through, the prism-like raindrops during a rain-shower.

This immense, curved spectrum of light appears only when both the elements of sunshine and rainfall present. As the sunlight enters the falling raindrops, it breaks up into its true colors of red, orange, yellow, blue, and violet. These colors are always arranged according to their wavelengths, with red being at one end of the spectrum, and violet at the other. Once inside the droplet, the particles of colored light bounce from side to side, reflect off of the far side of the droplet, exit the droplet, and reassemble, according to their wavelengths, to form a rainbow.