“Phone-y Rainbow”

By Irene Han

You’re probably familiar with the concept of a rainbow, where sunlight passes through rain droplets, producing a variety of colors. However, what really goes on is slightly more complicated than that: the light is composed of many particles that refract/bend and disperse, or separate, into different particles as they crosses the boundary of the rain droplet, with particles of different frequencies/colors bending at different angles. Inside the droplet, they reflect, and refract once more as they exit. In this photo, I attempted a cruder version of this concept by taking some water and scattering it across a white phone screen set to the highest brightness, making sure not to make the drops too big, as the light reflected in larger droplets were less visible. I had to take the shot at a particular angle in order to get the widest range of colors. The light coming from the screen plays the same role as sunlight in an ordinary rainbow, with the water manipulating the light particles to create an optical illusion that can be captured through the lens of a phone camera. What’s good to note about the light generated by the phone is that unlike natural light, it doesn’t include the full spectrum of colors, which is why the resultant rainbow in the photo appears to be slightly muted, with some of the more primary colors being red, green, and blue, although this may also be due to the limited size of the medium.