Quezi

Rainbow Road (photo by tinken - CC-BY)

Scientists will say it’s impossible to reach a rainbow’s end. Many papers and books have been published about the physics of light and of rainbows, learned treatises that carefully explain why it’s just not possible to get to the end of a rainbow.

Raymond L. Lee, Jr. a Research Professor in the Mathematics and Science Division at the U.S. Naval Academy, says in Chapter 4 of “The Rainbow Bridge: A Field Guide to the Rainbow,” “Because the rainbow is an image, not an object, you can never reach or touch it.”

Lois Polakoff of the Illinois Institute of Technology says, “Rainbows have no end, because they are circles. You can see the complete circle of a rainbow from an airplane. There is a reason why you can’t see the end of a rainbow from the ground.”

The rainbow page at the Franklin Institute’s “Resources for Science Learning” declares, ” You can never… actually reach the end of a rainbow, where a pot of gold supposedly awaits. As you move, the rainbow that your eyes see moves as well, because the raindrops are at different spots in the atmosphere. The rainbow, then, will always “move away” at the same rate that you are moving.”

And Dr. James B. Calvert, Associate Professor Emeritus of Engineering at the University of Denver and a Registered Professional Engineer, says in his paper on “The Rainbow,” “If the observer is at a slight elevation, some of the rainbow can be seen beneath the horizon, in front of not too distant objects, which gives the impression of a physical existence not too far away. The story of the “pot of gold” at the end of the rainbow takes advantage of this illusion to send fools on a quest. The rainbow just keeps receding as they try to approach it.”

But there are others who would disagree. For the most part these are not scientists, and not able to describe the phenomenon in scientific terms. You won’t find them on university websites, but in blogs and forums, chat groups and social networking sites. These are the people who have touched a rainbow, driven or walked through one, reached the rainbow’s end. Invariably, when they try to describe the experience, they are scoffed at, or dismissed, argued with and told they must have experienced an illusion or delusion, that they simply couldn’t have seen what they say they saw, because science says it’s not possible to touch a rainbow. I know how they feel. Because I touched a rainbow too.

It was on a rainy summer’s day early in 1977 in San Francisco. Driving south with my family on the freeway in a drizzling rain, through a gloomy industrial section of town, suddenly a rainbow appeared, a bright and glorious rainbow, but not far away as I’d always seen rainbows before, No, this one was very close, so close in fact, that the end of the rainbow appeared to be resting on the highway just a mile or so ahead. As we drove closer, it didn’t recede, but stayed right there. We got closer and closer and it still didn’t move. Finally we drove right into and through the end of the rainbow.

The rainbow’s light filled the inside of our car. We stared at ourselves and each other, awestruck with amazement and delight as we saw the colors of the rainbow flickering and dancing on our own skin and one another’s, coloring the air, the light an almost palpable presence, nearly alive. And then we drove out of it. Whipping our eyes and necks around, we could still see the end of the rainbow on the road behind. More than thirty years later, we all still remember, now as clearly as then.

So let the scientists prate on about optics and prisms and refracted light. But those of us who’ve touched a rainbow know the truth. Yes, you can reach the rainbow’s end.