The Beauty Within

It is undeniable that nature is beautiful. Rainbows, Auroras, Lightning, Waterfalls...... and on goes the list. I have on many occassions experienced this beauty for myself but only recently have I realised that all this beauty that I experienced was just on the surface. I was missing out on a lot of things. When I looked at a rainbow I only saw the colours and the pleasing pattern in which they arranged themselves.

Over the holidays I read extensively on electricity and magnetism. In the process I learnt a lot about some natural phenomena that I never gave much thought about.

Lightning is one example. I now know exactly how lightning is formed in the clouds - not just about the charge on the clouds and all that but the nitty-gritty details. I then realised that the experiences of the people without this knowledge are limited. They don't see the true beauty, the beauty within.

Another example is the rainbow. From now on whenever I see a rainbow I will always verify that the colour red is indeed on the outer side of the rainbow and blue on the inner. I will always compare the section of sky inside the rainbow and the sky outside and confirm that the inside is always brighter than the outside. I will not be able to resist looking for the secondary bow outside the first one and observe that the colour sequence is inverted as compared to the brighter innner bow. It is a disease for which there is no cure. And of course I will always know that the light is very strongly polarized. I will then walk away from this experience enriched and enlightened knowing that I have experienced the beauty within the rainbow, the invisible beauty that very few have experienced.

Ah the joy of learning Physics!