Rainbow

I paint the world in secrets. I give cherries their cheerful red and make the sky a peaceful blue. I splash across the grass in shades of green and hide in a sunbeam, waiting for a little rain to burst out and say hello. Sometimes, after a storm, I stretch across the sky in a giant, colorful arc. Have you seen me there? I’m in every crayon in your box, every flower in the garden, and even in the light that spills through your window. You see me every day, but do you know my real story, my biggest secret? For thousands of years, people wondered about me. They saw me everywhere but couldn't explain my magic. Before I tell you my name, let me take you on a journey through time to see how my story was finally revealed.

For a very, very long time, people loved me but didn't quite understand me. Way back, maybe 40,000 years ago, early humans used colors they found in the earth—like red ochre from clay and black from charcoal—to paint amazing pictures of animals on cave walls. They knew how to make me, but they didn't know what I was. Thousands of years later, around 350 BCE, a thoughtful man in ancient Greece named Aristotle looked up at the sky and had an idea. He believed that all colors were just a mixture of light and dark, like adding a little bit of shadow to sunshine. When he saw me arching across the sky after a storm, he thought I was a special kind of reflection from raindrops in the clouds. He was curious and full of wonder, and he was one of the first people to try and explain my secrets with science.

Then, much later, a brilliant scientist came along who changed everything. His name was Sir Isaac Newton, and he was about to solve the puzzle. In the year 1666, he was in a dark room and let just a tiny beam of sunlight shine through a hole in his window shutter. He held up a special, triangular piece of glass called a prism. And... wow. The single beam of white light hit the prism and fanned out onto the wall as a beautiful band of colors. He had found me. I am Colors and the Rainbow, and I had been hiding inside the sunlight all along. He saw red, orange, yellow, green, blue, indigo, and violet, all perfectly lined up. To prove that the prism didn't create me, he did something even more clever. He used a second prism to gather all of my colors back together, and they turned right back into a single beam of white light. He showed the world that I wasn't made by the prism; I was a natural part of light itself. That’s my secret: I am light, split into all my beautiful parts.

Today, knowing my secret helps people in so many amazing ways. Artists use my different shades to paint pictures that can make you feel happy, calm, or excited. Scientists study the light from distant stars to see what colors they are made of, which tells them what the stars are like. I can even help keep you safe—a bright red light tells drivers to stop, and a green one tells them it's safe to go. Every time you see a rainbow, you’re seeing millions of tiny raindrops acting like little prisms, doing the exact same trick that Isaac Newton discovered in his room. I am a reminder that the world is full of amazing science and hidden beauty, sometimes hiding in something as simple as a beam of light. So look around, and see all the ways I help make your world wonderful.