Fishy RefractionGabriella EaddyAward: Top 100
School: sleepy hollow high school This photo shows sunlight streaming through my window into my aquarium, leading to the perfect conditions for a cheery burst of color against the white-painted nightstand. While seemingly the work of a unicorn, or maybe even a leprechaun, this colorful display was purely the product of physics. The rainbow arc projected on the nightstand was due to the refraction of light through the water and glass. Around 9:00 AM, a beam of light passed through my window, slowing down as it entered the water of my aquarium. Since water is composed of more densely packed molecules than air, it hindered and slowed the light's path. This density change also caused the light to bend, bouncing off of different points and breaking down into its seven fundamental colors, also known as the colors of the rainbow: red, orange, yellow, green, blue, indigo, and violet. These colors have different indices of refraction, meaning they deviated at different angles from their straight path once they hit the water, splaying out into a rainbow. Due to the curvature of the aquarium corners, the rainbow exited from both sides of the edge, causing the arc shape. At this time, the sun was higher in the sky, having a smaller angle of incidence, or angle from the normal line perpendicular to the water surface. This created a smaller rainbow, as opposed to later in the day when the sun was lower and the refracted rainbow was larger in size. 
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