Rainbows

Blowing Up a Rainbow Probably Looks a Lot Like Dropping an Anvil on Spray Paint Cans

When you get exclusive access to a 150-foot-tall tower, you’re going to want to do more than just take in the view. So when the team from How Ridiculous got just such an opportunity, they made the most of it, hauling a heavy anvil to the top and then dropping it on a stack of…

Sploid Andrew Liszewski Sep 11

Incredible Video Reveals that Rainbows Actually Go All the Way Around

It turns out the recognizable half-circle arch of a rainbow is a complete lie. When you’re standing on the ground looking up at a rainbow in the sky, the curvature of the Earth usually blocks its bottom half. But when viewed from a higher vantage point, like from a plane, or the top of a…

Sploid Andrew Liszewski Jul 25

Collapsing, Color-Changing Dominoes Are Like Watching a Rainbow Die

It takes far more patience than most of us could ever muster to create the mesmerizing domino falls that Hevesh5 painstakingly lays out. It’s even harder to come up with ideas worth spending countless hours on, but these color-changing dominoes are especially satisfying. The use of nearly invisible clear dominoes also adds a unique element…

Sploid Andrew Liszewski Feb 13

Pouring Hot Water on Skittles Is Truly Magical

Skittles’ “taste the rainbow” tagline seems all the more appropriate when you arrange the colorful candies in a ring on a plate and pour hot water over them. They immediately begin to melt and bleed color, producing a rainbow design that’s straight up magical without the need for a wand. [YouTube via Boingboing]

Sploid Andrew Liszewski Oct 19

What It’s Like to Look Straight into a Rainbow

There’s no pot of gold at the end of the rainbow but there are some colorful visuals you can trip out on if you can figure out how to stare the right way. Here’s a video that supposedly shows a camera gliding through the spectrum of a rainbow and making its way through ROYGBIV backwards.…

Sploid Casey Chan May 4

These Wackily Colorful Rainbow Bagels Are Breaking My Eyeballs

The rainbow bagel looks like a Willy Wonka creation crossed with used play doh set in a reality that I’m not quite prepared to live in. It exists at The Bagel Store in Brooklyn, New York and is topped with a schmear of Funfetti cream cheese made with cake mix and is something you can…

Sploid Casey Chan Feb 2

Cheap Projector Uses Prisms to Create Color Images from B&W Source

Before LEDs and lasers came along, video projectors would shine white light through a rotating color wheel to produce full-color images. But researchers at Dartmouth College and Disney Research Zürich have come up with a more unusual projection approach using prisms and very precise computer-generated black and white images. What’s most remarkable about this unique…

Tech News Andrew Liszewski Dec 30

There Are Twelve Different Kinds of Rainbows

The science of rainbows: it’s something we’re all taught in grade school. Airborne water droplets act like little prisms, bending and splitting light. Mix enough water and sunshine, and you get a brilliant bow of color. The reality is quite a bit more complicated. Some rainbows have a second, inverted bow, caused by the reflection…

Tech News Maddie Stone Dec 19

Awesome photo of a V-22 Osprey inside a rainbow

Just a perfect photo of a Marines MV-22 Osprey landing on the flight deck of the dock landing ship USS Harpers Ferry. The timing is lovely because it’s landing right through a rainbow, making the color of the aircraft (or at least the part that’s inside the rainbow) just a little more shimmery and different.…

Sploid Casey Chan Oct 28

This Giant Rainbow Was Made With Tech That’s Used To Study Exoplanets

It’s not very often that the fields of advanced photonics and installation art meet. But in Amsterdam this week, visitors to the city’s Central Station are getting a look at what happens when liquid crystal optic technology is used to something completely unscientific: Make public art. The installation celebrates Central Station’s 125th birthday, and it’s…

Tech News Kelsey Campbell-Dollaghan Dec 16

The beauty and scary power of Mother Nature in one GIF

Aw look, it’s a rainbow. Maybe that means the rain is going to stop. Maybe that means the dark clouds are going away. Maybe it means we should go outdoors soon… NOPE. Maybe not. As these people were filming a rainbow, Mother Nature decided to blast out a lightning bolt right in their face. Sometimes…

Sploid Casey Chan Aug 27

Behold The Marvel Of Nature That Is A Cloudbow

Better known as an iridescent cloud, a cloudbow is just what it sounds like: A cloud full of rainbows. Photographer and astronomer Oleg Bartunov captured this shot of a rare bank of iridescent clouds rising above Thamserku mountain in the Himalayas — and then was able to capture several more views just before the phenomenon…

io9 Ria Misra Jul 9

A Field Guide To Understanding The Many Possible Colors Of Your Urine

We’re accustomed to seeing urine as yellow, or, if we’re extremely hydrated, clear. That doesn’t mean that pee can’t have all kinds of colors. Let’s explore the biochemistry of making one’s pee all the colors of the rainbow. Red Well, this is an easy one. It might be blood reddening your urine, in which case…

io9 Esther Inglis-Arkell Jun 26

Watch LeVar Burton Explain How Double Rainbows Form

Everyone knows how rainbows appear—they just need water, sunlight and you—but have you ever wondered how double rainbows form? In this video, LeVar Burton explains how they form. Yes, LeVar Burton of Reading Rainbow. This couldn’t be any more wonderful if it tried. [SciShow] https://gizmodo.com/levar-burton-enlists-the-internet-to-help-resurrect-rea-1582583129

Tech News Jamie Condliffe May 30

A “rainbow” made of sulphuric acid appears in the atmosphere of Venus

Check out this amazingly beautiful optical effect — this rainbow-like feature, called a “glory,” was recently captured by Europe’s Venus Express orbiter. This is the first time the phenomenon, which also happens on Earth, has been imaged on another planet. Top image: Simulated views of a glory on Venus (left) and Earth (right). Credit: C.…

io9 George Dvorsky Mar 11

Why is this spiderweb full of rainbows?

This is as joyous as any spiderweb is ever going to look. Either spiders are killing pixies and smearing their colorful blood on their webs (I wouldn’t put it past them) or something else is going on here. What we’re seeing is the result of diffraction. A strand of spiders silk is only two to…

io9 Esther Inglis-Arkell Jan 15

You can make man made rainbows with this giant LED glow stick

Rainbows are visual desserts, you’re always happier after you see them. But we don’t see them enough! Not with a Pixelstick though. It’s a giant stick that has 198 LEDs that can be programmed to display colorful rainbows, 3D cubes, pulsating magic carpets and so on in your light paintings. Basically wave, set your camera…

Sploid Casey Chan Oct 30

How to Make Rainbow Pasta and Show Pride

This post originally ran 3/18/2013. We’re re-running it in celebration of DOMA’s demise, the overturning of Prop 8, and in solidarity with our LGBT brother and sisters. Plow through a couple of bowls of rainbow pasta today to be ready for whatever the SF Pride Parade throws at you. It’s been a brutal day at…

Tech News Andrew Tarantola Jun 30

How to Write a Sex Scene Between a Unicorn and a Rainbow

The first thing you need to know is this: I wrote “The Unicorn and the Rainbow” on a dare. Which, given that this is the one story in my new erotica collection that everyone remembers and everyone talks about, is a weird beginning. But it’s a true story. Top image: Unicorn of the Rainbow by…

io9 Greta Christina Jun 25

A Horizontal Rainbow Makes For Easier Trips to Oz

We’ve all seen our share of quadruple rainbows and rainbows from space, but it’s not to often you catch on lying down one the job. A particularly lazy refraction showed up in Paris the other day, but it’s not quite as it seems. https://gizmodo.com/wow-man-its-a-double-rainbow-from-space-5922105 The rainbow is actually normal, but thanks to the angle of…

Tech News Eric Limer Mar 27

Rainbows

Blowing Up a Rainbow Probably Looks a Lot Like Dropping an Anvil on Spray Paint Cans

Incredible Video Reveals that Rainbows Actually Go All the Way Around

Collapsing, Color-Changing Dominoes Are Like Watching a Rainbow Die

Pouring Hot Water on Skittles Is Truly Magical

What It’s Like to Look Straight into a Rainbow

These Wackily Colorful Rainbow Bagels Are Breaking My Eyeballs

Cheap Projector Uses Prisms to Create Color Images from B&W Source

There Are Twelve Different Kinds of Rainbows

Awesome photo of a V-22 Osprey inside a rainbow

This Giant Rainbow Was Made With Tech That’s Used To Study Exoplanets

The beauty and scary power of Mother Nature in one GIF

Behold The Marvel Of Nature That Is A Cloudbow

A Field Guide To Understanding The Many Possible Colors Of Your Urine

Watch LeVar Burton Explain How Double Rainbows Form

A “rainbow” made of sulphuric acid appears in the atmosphere of Venus

Why is this spiderweb full of rainbows?

You can make man made rainbows with this giant LED glow stick

How to Make Rainbow Pasta and Show Pride

How to Write a Sex Scene Between a Unicorn and a Rainbow

A Horizontal Rainbow Makes For Easier Trips to Oz

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