--- title: Mirrors, rainbows and the blue sky — a lesson of Mova's school · trees and pragmatics description: «Mirrors, rainbows and the blue sky», a lesson of the physics course of Mova's primary school, sentence by sentence with dependency trees and pragmatics. It begins: A mirror is so smooth that light bounces off it neatly, at the same angle it arrived, so the picture stays whole; crumpled foil bounces --- [Mova](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/) · [this page in HTML](https://mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/physics/21-mirrors-rainbows-and-the-blue-sky/) [home](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/) / [corpora](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/) / [school](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/) / [Physics](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/physics/) / Mirrors, rainbows and the blue sky # Mirrors, rainbows and the blue sky Lesson 21 of the physics course of Mova's primary school: 14 sentences, each with its syntax tree and pragmatics. The lessons are written for Mova, and their agreed trees are part of Mova corpus 0.4 (CC BY-SA 4.0). How Mova does on its tests: [the lesson at school](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/school-run/physics/21-mirrors-rainbows-and-the-blue-sky/). - [0](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/physics/21-mirrors-rainbows-and-the-blue-sky/0/) — A mirror is so smooth that light bounces off it neatly, at the same angle it arrived, so the picture stays whole; crumpled foil bounces light every which way and shows no picture at all. - [1](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/physics/21-mirrors-rainbows-and-the-blue-sky/1/) — White sunlight is really a mixture of all the colours, and when it passes through a raindrop or a glass prism each colour bends by a slightly different amount, so they fan out into a rainbow. - [2](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/physics/21-mirrors-rainbows-and-the-blue-sky/2/) — You only ever see a rainbow with the Sun behind you, and it has no end you can walk to, so there is no pot of gold. - [3](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/physics/21-mirrors-rainbows-and-the-blue-sky/3/) — The sky is blue because the tiny bits of the air scatter blue light all over the sky much more than red; at sunset the light crosses so much air that most of the blue is scattered away, leaving orange and red. - [4](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/physics/21-mirrors-rainbows-and-the-blue-sky/4/) — Light also bends when it goes from water into air, which is why a straw in your glass looks broken at the surface. - [6](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/physics/21-mirrors-rainbows-and-the-blue-sky/6/) — A mirror does not really swap left and right; it swaps front and back, which makes writing look back to front. - [8](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/physics/21-mirrors-rainbows-and-the-blue-sky/8/) — The inside curve of a spoon shows you upside down, while its outside curve shows you the right way up and spreads the view out. - [10](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/physics/21-mirrors-rainbows-and-the-blue-sky/10/) — A rainbow forms when each raindrop bends sunlight, splits it into colours and bounces it back, and you see it only with the Sun behind you. - [11](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/physics/21-mirrors-rainbows-and-the-blue-sky/11/) — A fine spray from a garden hose, with your back to the Sun, can make a little rainbow, because any water drop can split light. - [12](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/physics/21-mirrors-rainbows-and-the-blue-sky/12/) — A glass prism bends violet light most and red light least, and Newton showed that a second prism could mix the colours back into white. - [13](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/physics/21-mirrors-rainbows-and-the-blue-sky/13/) — The sky is blue because the gas in the air scatters blue light much more than red; from the Moon, with no air, the sky is black even by day. - [14](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/physics/21-mirrors-rainbows-and-the-blue-sky/14/) — Sunsets are orange and red because sunlight crosses far more air, and most of the blue is scattered away on the way, and dust in the air, such as after a big volcano erupts, scatters away even more blue. - [15](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/physics/21-mirrors-rainbows-and-the-blue-sky/15/) — Clouds are white because their droplets are much bigger than air molecules and scatter all colours equally; thick rain clouds look grey because little light gets through. - [16](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/physics/21-mirrors-rainbows-and-the-blue-sky/16/) — A straw in water looks bent because light changes direction as it passes from water into air, and herons aim carefully because a fish is not quite where it looks. - ← previous: [Light and shadows](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/physics/20-light-and-shadows/) - next →: [Lenses and eyes](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/physics/22-lenses-and-eyes/) - ↑ back to [Physics](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/physics/)