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You
dont need rain, or even a sprinkler, to see rainbows.
In this exhibit, visitors make rainbows by shining a
light at a layer of the glass beads that make highway
signs and street markings highly reflective. Rainbows
in sunlight are always circular arcs because the source
is effectively at infinity, so all incoming rays are
parallel. Circular rainbows can be seen at our exhibit
too, as special cases of a whole family of curves determined
by the relative positions of the eye, the light source,
and the plane of the glass beads. The arcs are circular
when the line through the eye and the source is perpendicular
to the plane of the beads.
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