Journal Entry 3
Analyse why red sunsets can sometimes be more impressive when there is more dust or pollution in the air than usual.
The pollutant aerosols in the atmosphere tend to settle with time into layers, with larger particles forming the denser layers closest to the ground. Sunlight fades gradually and takes on an orange-red hue as it traverses these layers. The scattered light loses more of the shorter-wavelength colours, so that mainly red gets through. The sky takes on a dull red glow; the shades of red become darker nearer the Earth’s surface as the scattered light comes from the increasingly dense layers of the lower atmosphere.
Describe what happens inside water droplets to cause a rainbow and explain how you can tell whether a rainbow is a primary or secondary.
White light goes into the raindrops and because different colour light has different velocities so as the refractive rays come out a raindow is formed. A primary rainbow has red at the top and blue at the bottom and a secondary randow has blue at the top and red at the bottom.
