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Rainbows, 4th of July, Presidential Trivia

4th of July Trivia:

Do you know which US president was born on July 4th and which three died on that date?  See Below.

After the Memorial service for Tim Russert, there was an incredibly beautiful rainbow that arched over the NBC news studio. With frequent thunderstorms during the summer, have you ever wondered how rainbows form?? To understand how they form, you need to understand that sunlight is a mixture of many colors. Thanks to the earth’s atmosphere, which bounces light waves around, the sun looks yellow and the sky looks blue. The colors in sunlight can be separated by using a prism; the simplest being the triangular bar of glass. Light waves going into it are bent. Each color in sunlight has a slightly different wavelength, and each wavelength or color is bent at a slightly different angle. Sunlight shining into the prism comes out as bands of colors ranging from red through all the colors to violet. This is called a spectrum.

Glass prisms aren’t the only things that bend light. Diamonds cut for jewelry break light up in such a way that colors flash out of the stones. Even drops of water can bend the light that falls on them in the right way. When sunlight passes through the air which is full of droplets of water, each of the billions of droplets act as a tiny prism, bending the light into separate colors.

Colorful rainbows can also be seen when the sun’s rays are passing through the waterfall. You an make your own rainbow with a garden hose. Stand with your back to the sun at a time of the day when the sun is low in the sky. Point the nozzle of the hose upward and turn on the fine spray. Rainbows can happen anywhere there is light and water droplets to bend the light. You won’t see a rainbow at Noon. The sun has to be at a 45 degree angle or less. Thus, the rainbow that fell over the NBC Washington D.C. studio was in late afternoon. Great timing.

The answer to the 4th quiz….  Calvin Coolidge was born (1872) on July 4th; Thomas Jefferson (1826), John Adams (1826) and James Monroe (1872) all died on that date.

Speaking of the 4th of July - have you clicked on our Home Page list of the 10 hottest 4th on record? Interestingly, they have  all occurred  since 2001. Hot, Hot, Hot.