How are rainbows formed in simple terms?

Thanks for the A2A. Let me break it down into steps that describe how the image is formed. (With all due respect to Zane Scheepers, this has nothing to do with the way your eyes and brain process the image that hits your eyeball, which is the same whether it is the image of a rainbow, a basket of kittens, or a traffic light). read more

Sunlight is made up of all the colors of the rainbow, which all together look white to us. Now when sunlight shines on droplets of rain high in the air something special happens: the light travels into the droplet, is reflected off its back and then exits the droplet. read more