The Science Behind How We See Rainbows | April 8, 2025 – YouTube Dictation Transcript & Vocabulary

1.[Music] what's up sunshine Welcome to beautiful San Antonio Texas We are on the beautiful Riverwalk cruising along with our friends at Go Rio Cruises and my captain this is Captain Joelle He's been doing this 33 years now That is awesome Welcome to CNN 10 I'm Koi Wire We want to give a big congrats to the University of Connecticut the Huskies locking up their 12th NCAA women's basketball championship in an impressive win over South Carolina And on the men's side last night right here in San Antonio it was the Florida Gator coming out on top with their big win over Houston So congrats to them as well All right let's get you your news We start today with some of the dangerous spring weather that we're seeing across the southern US and Midwest Destructive storms unleashed relentless rain and produced tornadoes over the weekend and they've only begun to subside at the beginning of the week Across the central US the National Weather Service logged at least 58 tornadoes since the storms began Those storms dumped over a foot of rain across the Midsouth since last week Over the weekend more than a dozen daily rainfall records were set in Arkansas and Tennessee Memphis saw its wetest day ever in April with more than 5 ines of rain Although the rain has stopped communities are not out of danger as rivers continue to rise Widespread flooding has triggered evacuations water rescues and warnings to move to a higher ground across Kentucky The Kentucky River is predicted to crest at a new record of 49 1/2 ft the highest level it's reached since flooding in 1978 Kucky's governor declared a state of emergency last week and urged residents statewide to take the flood threat seriously Pop quiz hot shot Weather balloons carry what instrument used to measure the atmosphere Barometer radio son thermostat or animometer If you said radio son rise up It's a small battery powered instrument suspended below a weather balloon gathering atmospheric data like temperature pressure and humidity then transmitting that info to a ground receiver via radio The National Weather Service has been launching weather balloons and their attached radio signs to make upper atmosphere observations since the 1930s And while other methods like Doppler radar satellites and aircraft observations help in this effort the National Weather Service considers weather balloons the best method for measuring weather factors like humidity wind and pressure for building accurate weather forecasts So what happens if some of these balloons launched twice a day from more than a 100 sites across the US no longer take flight Our meteorologist Alli Chinchar has more [Music] We are at the National Weather Service office We're going to be running through a weather balloon launch today There are roughly 100 National Weather Service offices scattered across North America and the Pacific Islands And they're all roughly evenly spread out so that you get good coverage when you're trying to give forecasts for a specific area All of these dots here represent a site that offers weather balloon launches twice a day every single day The yellow dots indicate a location that's gone down to just one launch per day instead of the usual two The red dots indicate where they have gotten rid of the launches entirely Our particular weather balloon here is filled with hydrogen which is then attached to an instrument called a radio sand that measures temperature humidity pressure as well as wind speed as it moves up in the atmosphere Uh one of their core functions is that the data that we take from them twice a day is used and ingested into weather models that produce the forecast that you say get on your phone or are utilized by your local or national TV meteorologist They can also be used in the event of severe weather Sometimes on extremely windy or stormy days it actually can take two or even three National Weather Service employees to launch the balloons Oftent times when you have a tropical system that is nearing landfall or a severe outbreak that is expected many of these offices will actually issue extra balloon launches perhaps one or even two more per day Now we're actually cutting back on the weather balloon launches rather than adding more in times that we really need to have the extras All right so far in today's episode we have talked about storms and the best ways to predict them What about some of the beauty that comes after the storm Sometimes we see those rainbows right And it turns out this everyday marvel is more complex than you think We all know that no two people are exactly the same And it turns out no two people will ever see the same exact rainbow in the same way Why We humans each see our own unique set of reflected light from different raindrops from our own very different perspectives Our me Terrell talks to a professor of atmospheric sciences to help explain this fascinating phenomenon Did you know that no two people see the exact same rainbow Each person sees their own rainbow These amazing displays of nature are different for everybody because they're created by sunlight refracting through raindrops and then reflecting back out And we all see reflections from different drops According to atmospheric scientist Dr Steven Boozinger It seems like you're seeing the same rainbow but in in as a matter of physics you're actually seeing different rainbows because you have a different perspective slightly different perspective So the rainbow's being made up of different raindrops We all know what it takes to make a rainbow sunshine and rain at the same time But what's actually happening Booinger says is that as sunlight hits the droplets it bends or refracts And because colors travel at different wavelengths the bending reveals them to the human eye The wavelength of blue light is shorter than the wavelength of red light And the energy associated with the blue light is higher than the energy associated with the red light And so the blue light tends to be bent more than the red light And each raindrop is actually reflecting only one color back to us We see red on top of a rainbow and blue on the bottom Because their different wavelengths mean they exit the raindrops at different angles Each raindrop in the shower is producing one color for your eye and then you go to the next raindrop and it produces another color And in some that gives you the whole rainbow If you're very lucky you might see a double rainbow It's a second reflection at the back of the drop so that the light comes out at a at a higher angle or on a bright moonlight night If you go out at night and there's a full moon and you look away from the moon there are times where you can see a rainbow or a moon bow I guess it's called at that point But Booinger's favorite rainbow fact is that you'll never find the end of a rainbow You're on a in a helicopter or a small plane you can see a a full circle rainbow because the rain doesn't hit the ground and it creates a a full circle So no pot of gold but now you know some physics and that's everyday science [Applause] Today's story getting a 10 out of 10 An offline club ditching screen time for IRL time The offline club started in Amsterdam in the Netherlands offering a space for folks to take a break from their screens and all the distractions that keep us plugged in scrolling and those sorts of things and missing more in-person connections with the people around us Now there are offline club chapters in cities around the world from London to Lisbon to Dubai where people of all ages are coming together for a screenfree fun Take a look My name's Ben Hansel and I'm city leader for the offline club London We're pioneering a movement to help people swap screen time for real time It was founded by three Dutch guys in Amsterdam in February 2024 is just a group of friends trying to get away from their phones And since then it's really grown into a global movement So it's just a phone free event You turn up you hand your phone in at the start and for the next 2 hours you're offline We'll have live music live piano and then people will pick up those forgotten hobbies reading journaling writing It's really mindful I'm not anti-tech myself I think it's just very beneficial to get away from tech for a few hours So I'm 23 years old In my previous startup I was spending hours upon hours a day optimizing video for Tik Tok making sure it was as addictive as possible Ironic right I think for us as humans it's about discovering what parts of these phones do that we want to use for good and what parts aren't benefiting us Our core audience is actually 90% female ages 25 to 50 So it's not actually really Gen Z and Gen Alpha that are coming to these events I think they're just the most addicted to their phones We got weaker real world connections It's really declining our mental health My pep talk would just be to come to an offline event Come and chat to me there in person and I reckon I could convince them to go offline for a bit All right I want to give one more thanks to my captain Joel Appreciate you sir And we're going to make this a two shout out Tuesday This one goes to the Cougars at Hatam Killingworth Middle School in Killingworth Connecticut Thank you for subscribing and making us part of your day And this one goes to John J High School and all our Mustangs right here in San Antonio We see you Coach A Remember tomorrow's #youword Wednesday You know the drill Submit your unique vocabulary word and definition along with your school's name and we'll choose one fun winner to work in tomorrow's show Let's go And yehaw y'all Hope you float on through this day real nice Like I'm Ky Wire and we are CNN 10 [Music]