THERE ARE NOT SEVEN COLOURS IN THE RAINBOW
Actually there's a very large number
of distinct colours in any rainbow. And neither are there sharp divisions
between the bands of colour, yet numerous textbooks depict them. In reality,
between yellow and green we find yellow-green, and between green and yellow
green is greenish yellow green, and on and on. How many colours are in a rainbow? Thirty? Sixty? It's not easy to say, for it depends on the
particular eye, and the particular rainbow. What of the teachers and students
who look in vain for the yellow-green in their textbook's depiction of
rainbows? They've crashed into a long-running textbook misconception: the
strange idea that rainbows have exactly seven distinct bands of colour and no
more, and with nothing in between those uniform bands of 'official' colour.
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