THE JOKE

Mother : "I've just looked in the mirror, and I was surprised to see that I've got seven gray hairs!"
Tina : "But why? You are still young, Mom. Young people are not supposed to have gray hairs."
Mother : "Yes, you are right. But my gray hairs were due to your bad attitude to me. If you had been a good girl to me, I would not have had any gray hairs!"
Tina : "Gosh, Mom, then you must have been very annoying to Grandma. Her hairs are all gray!"

SLEEP IMPROVES YOUR MEMORY

If you want to remember what you learn, take a short sleep for the night right after learning it - that's the conclusion of a university study.
In the study, 40 college students were randomly divided into groups. Everyone was asked to memorize a series of nonsense syllables and a short story. Then some of the students had a short sleep, while the others watched a two-hour movie.
Afterward, they were given questions on what they remembered . The students who had a sleep performed much better than those who didn't, the study found.
Researches found that it didn't matter whether students had a sleep in the morning or in the afternoon - they still remembered more than the students who stayed awake.
Experts believe that having a sleep right after learning something helps you remember it because you have no other facts to interfere with what you've just learned.
So, if you are trying to remember information for a test the next morning, it's best to retire for the night immediately after studying. Don't stay up - go straight to bed.
By having a sleep immediately after learning new material, you are more likely to retain that information.

HOW TO MAKE YOUR DREAMS COME TRUE

There is nothing in life you can't achieve if you really want it, and this plan will pave the way to your goal - whether it is a better job, more money, a happy marriage, a world cruise, or simply being successful in life.
So here, for everybody who want to achieve his/her goal, is a special plan to make your dreams come true.
Get Started
The hardest part of reaching any goal is getting started, but once you have taken that vital first step, the odds are great that you will succeed.
For example, if your dream is to ownn your bussiness, start by designing your letterhead. If you have your heart set on a spesific job that pays more money, draft a letter telling about your abilities and experience and send it to all the companies that type of position.
Expect to Win
Many people laugh themselves towards their dreams only to have their hopes dashed prematurely because they begin to doubt that they will succed.
It is said that hope is the great power that can move you to success. So, when a man expects to win, he gives it all he's got.
Imagine Your Dream Coming True
The power of the human mind is limitless. Picture yourselves as the boss of your own company, or living in that fancy house in the country, and it will make your work harder toward achieving that goal.
Whatever you dream, you will never succeed until you turn your imagination loose and imagine your success.
Expect Problems
Don't be surprised when you run into difficulties. If you expect them, they won't panic you. Smart people never seize opportunities without asking what problems they might reasonably expect.
Just because you are trying to make a dream come true doesn't mean you should be a starry-eyed dreamer.
Believe in Yourself
First thing every morning, a friend of your might repeat out loud, "I believe... I believe... I believe." And he follows that with, "I can... I can... I can."
That kind of positive thinking works wonders. It flushes negativity out of the brain right at the start of the day. It's even a good idea to repeat this two or three times a day.
Be Patient
The road to almost every dream is dogged by periods when nothing seems to be moving forward. The danger is that we may be tempted to quit during this dreary times.
Very many successful people share the ability to be patient. You should never waver from your course just because things aren't moving ahead as planned.

JOKE

Two boys were on a bicycle-built-for-two. They had a very hard time going up a steep hill, but they finally got to the top.
"Whew," said the first boy.
"I didn't think we'd ever make it."
"Well, I helped," said the second boy. "I kept the brakes on so we wouldn't roll back down."

BODY LANGUAGE (THE MESSAGE BEHIND THE SMILE)

Anyone dealing with people from other cultures can expect difficulties if s/he is not aware of the non-verbal signs that others use to express their feelings, that 'silent language' that accompanies and augments the spoken language. In fact, what people do is often more revealing than what they say!
When an Australian greets someone, s/he normally looks the other in the eyes, smiles, and extends a strong, firm handshake. This is customary to show that s/he is honest, straight-forward, sincere and friendly, although businesslike. But in Zaire, a woman introduced to a man who then smiled at him would be considered to be behaving improperly.
Do you look someone straight in the eyes when you are talking to him or her? A Briton will tend to do that much more so than an American, who probably has been brought up to believe that it is impolite to gaze fixedly at someone. But it is not unusual for an Arab to stare at someone to show that he is paying attention. The way an American will look at an Arab only occasionally, even while speaking to him/her, will seem to the Arab to be showing inattentiveness and a lack of interest. In Korea, however, people think Americans always seem to fix others with their gaze in a most sinister way, while Koreans in the United States say that often they do not know what to do with their eyes. Brought up to always look away, they feel embarrassed when called upon to respond to the relatively steady looks of Americans.
In the United Kingdom, and really in all native English-speaking countries, it is important to look someone in the eyes when you want to show you are trustworthy and honest. Immigrants and foreign visitors to the United States can run into problems with this. In Puerto Rico for example, when you appear before a figure of authority, it is only proper to look away as a sign of respect. Yet an American might very well interpret this as an evasiveness and a sign of dishonesty!
Your face can change the meaning of a gesture made with your hands. The difference can make a world of difference in how a hand gesture is interpreted. Many gestures that might be interpreted as hostile if made while frowning can easily be changed into a sign of friendliness and "just fooling around" if made while smiling.
To a Frenchman or Englishman, making a zero with the thumb and forefinger indicates that everything is O.K. - if made while smiling. If made while frowning, it means that everything is probably O.K. but conveys some doubt and suspicion. Yet for a Japanese that same hand gesture means money!
For many Westerners, an easy relaxed posture is to stand with your hands on your hips, or with just front pants pockets. But an Indonesian attending an American university spent many miserable weeks because of this, as he thought this posture means aggression. And for him, it did, since in Javanese and Sundanese wayang mythology hostile figures who are quarrelling or going to fight will stand with their arms like that as an expression of anger, challenge or hostility, in some other cultures, this position indicates arrogance, that you think you're better than or superior to the person you're speaking to.
But there are no dictionaries of non-verbal language that you can consult when you arrive in a foreign country. A researcher named Ray Birdwhistell wrote that he had not found any single gesture that means the same thing in all countries. "A body can be bowed in grief, humility, aggression, or laughter. A smile in one country shows friendliness, in another embarrassment, and in still another may contain a warning that unless tension is reduced, hostility and attack will follow."
Imagine a group of foreigners arriving at Los Angeles International Airport. As they are getting off the plane, a friendly official beckons them over to the airport bus. Not only does he use his left hand (which in many countries is regarded as improper) but he probably waves them towards him with the palm of his hand upturned. Several of the newcomers think they are being regarded as children or animals because of this. There are plenty of empty seats on the bus, but several people sit down next to Americans when they could have had a seat by themselves. The Americans, who have always been taught to keep their distance, find this most uncomfortable and edge away with unpleasant expressions on their faces. The visitors start to wonder if maybe they forgot to brush their teeth or something. A Thai finds himself sitting next to a Dutchman who is wearing open sandals, and is sitting with his big toe pointing straight at the Thai. The Thai feels hurt by what he perceives as an insult.
The group of travellers now goes into the terminal and decides to ask for information about taxis and hotels at the information desk. They see a clerk sitting behind the desk with a line of people standing in silence in front of him. One of the group, a Colombian, thinks that they are not interested in talking to the clerk and so he walks straight up to the desk and asks the clerk for help. He then feels very hurt when several people in the line, and the clerk, ask him to go to the end of the line-up and wait his turn. In English speaking-countries, it is enough to stand before a desk or counter to make it known that you want something. Additionally it is considered quite rude to try to go ahead of others who are lined-up and waiting. But that is not the case in Colombia where people do not queue, and must ask for service if they want anyone to pay attention to them.
There happens to be a reception committee to meet our group and the committee members also come from different countries. The Indonesians smile to themselves when they see the members of a French family kissing each other. That is an act of love-making that should be done in private ... isn't it? Two Arabs surprise the rest by throwing their arms around each other in a warm embrace. A Polynesian visitor is greeted by a fellow-countryman who is now living in the U.S., and the newcomer gives him a friendly hug and starts rubbing his back.
A Chinese gentlemen is trying to avoid shaking hands with a German - the Chinese do not like to be touched. Meanwhile, a mother from Laos has just seen an Italian give her son a friendly pat on the head, and she is desperately trying to save her other children from the same 'terrible fate' - in Laos, the head is the home of the soul and must not be touched.
The countless meanings of time, a different consept in each culture cause endless confusion. An Australian or a German instinctively expects a meeting to start at the time that has been agreed upon. In Costa Rica, however, it is perfectly normal to have to wait 45 minutes to see an important official (or at least one who thinks he is important). A Canadian kept waiting for 45 minutes would feel insulted.
When someone from Spanish-speaking Latin America says 'manana' (pron. man-yan-na), someone from the United States would think he meant 'tomorrow', and most bilingual dictionaries would confirm that. But the Latino might mean tomorrow, the day after tomorrow, next week, next year, or not at all! Thus a more accurate cultural translation would be "not today".
The Germans and Swiss tend to be more time-conscious than Americans and they have no concept that is similar to the Indonesian 'rubber-time' (jam karet). But the Sioux Indians go even further. In their language there are no words for 'time', 'late' or 'waiting'.
If a business deal is being struck between a Canadian and someone from India, endless confusion may result when the Canadian asks the Indian if s/he agrees. The Indian responds by shaking his/her head from side to side - in India it means "yes", while in Canada it means "no".
From all of the above, it can be seen that what is polite and proper in one culture may or may not be in another and that one people's system of politeness is no more or less polite than another people's system - just different!
So, when you are talking to someone from a different cultural background, watch and think about the different ways in which you both use your hands. Also notice how close to each other you want to stand. Asians in general stand much closer than Westerners. How close one should stand varies from culture to culture and it is possible to make other people very uncomfortable by standing too close or too far away. Try to keep an open mind and not to have preconceived notions about what is polite or proper and what is not.
Above all try not to judge others by your culture's rules - those rules do not apply to those people outside your culture.

Source : Peter Burgess, Body Language The Message Behind The Smile, Hello Magazines, No. 22, September 1987.

THE POWER A CANDLE

As usual, that night Nasreddin and his friends were chatting at the old coffee shop. The snow was falling down out-side. In such a cold night, having sweet black coffee was a very good way to pass the time.
"It's a very cold night," said one of them.
"Yes, you're right. Maybe it's the coldest night in this year. I'm sure no one can stay outside till morning," said another.
Suddenly Nasreddin said, "I can stand in the snow all night long."
"I could do it if I stood beside a warm fireplace," said another man. Then they laughed.
"No, I'm serious," added Nasreddin. "I can stand in the snow all night long without any fire to warm me."
"You're kidding, Nasreddin. No one can do that!" said another one. "See outside!" he said, pointing to the falling snow outside.
Nasreddin stared at his old watch. It ws 02.00 a.m. Morning would break in about three and a half hours. "I can do it!" he shouted. "I'll do it now."
"All right, if you make it, I'll pay for all your meals tomorrow. But if you fail, you will have to give us all good breakfast," said Mehmet.
"Okay, I agree," answered Nasreddin.
When Nasreddin looked at his watch, it said two thirty. He smiled when he imagine that the next day Mehmet would pay for all his meals. Then he went out to the yard of the coffee shop, while his friends went home and slept on their warm beds.
It seemed that the minutes passed so slowly in the lonely night. Nasreddin did not imagine this before. Now he stood alone in the snow. Sometimes he was tempted to go home. But he remembered that if he went home, he would have to give his friends good breakfast, while he did not have much money. So he tried to cheer himself up in order to forget the very cold weather.
Besides the cold weather, the sleepiness was also a hard thing to defeat. To avoid being numb, he kept moving his cold feet. Then he looked around/ "Having a cup of coffee would be very nice," he thought. And when he looked at the coffee shop, he saw a flickering candle inside. He looked at it for a long time and he learnt that the coldness and the sleepiness could be forgotten by concentrating his mind on the flickering candle. So, he spent the rest of the night by watching the candle.
Early in the next morning his friends came. They were amazed to see that Nasreddin was still standing in the snow.
"Hi, Nasreddin. Did you really stand here all night long?" asked Mehmet.
"Or you went home when we were not here last night?" asked another.
Nasreddin smiled, "I'm an honest man. Why should I cheat you. Ask the owner of the coffee shop. He knew that I was here," said Nasreddin.
"Tell me, how could you stay here all night long, while the weather was so cold?" asked another friend.
"I admit that it was very hard for me. Besides the cold weather, the sleepiness was quite hard to fight," he answered. "But finally I learnt that by concentrating my mind on the candle in the coffee shop I was able to forget the coldness and the sleepiness."
His friends laughed. Mehmet said, "You lose the bet, Nasreddin. You must give us good breakfast!"
"No, I win. I was able to stay here all night long!" shouted Nasreddin.
"Yesterday we agreed that you wouldn't use any candle or fire to warm you. But you made use of candle to warm you. You lose the bet!" said Mehmet.
The other men laughed at him too.
"But, the candle was very far from here, don't you see? How could it affect me here?" argued Nasreddin.
His friends, however, wouldn't understand. They said that Nasreddin lost the bet and had to give them breakfast. They said that no matter how distant the candle was from the place he stood, he made use of it all the same.
Nasreddin gave up. He invited them to come to his house. When they arrived, Nasreddin asked them to sit in the living room. Then he went to the kitchen to cook the breakfast.
The four friends had been sitting and chatting for sometime in the living room, but Nasreddin did not appear. Mehmet went to the kitchen door. From there he saw Nasreddin sleeping in the kitchen. He said, "What are you doing, Nasreddin? It's been a very long time."
"Wait for a few minutes more, friends. Just be patient," answered Nasreddin sleepily.
Several minutes passed by. His friends not stand it anymore. They went into the kitchen. They said angrily, "Nasreddin, wake up! Where do you cook the meal?"
Nasreddin got up, still sleepily. "Over there," he said, pointing to the corner of the kitchen.
The men were very surprised to see what Nasreddin had there. There was a flickering half-burnt candle and a sauce pan hung a meter above it.
"You're crazy!" shouted Mehmet, while pointing to Nasreddin's face. "How can you cook some food with a candle a meter beneath it?"
"Just the same. How could a candle several meters away warm me last night?"

Taken from Nasreddin, a Man Who Never Gives Up, retold by Sugeng Hariyanto, Kanisius, 1998.

THE MYSTERIOUS RAINBOW (2)

What makes colors in the rainbow?
The traditional description of the rainbow is that it is made up of seven colors - red, orange, yellow, green, blue, indigo, and violet. Actually, the rainbow is a whole continuum of colors from red to violet and even beyond the colors that the eye can see.
The colors of the rainbow arise from two basic facts:
* Sunlight is made up of the whole range of colors that the eye can detect. The range of sunlight colors, when combined, looks white to the eye. This property of sunlight was first demonstrated by Sir Isaac Newton in 1666.
* Light of different colors is refracted by different amounts when it passes from one medium (air, for example) into another (water or glass, for example).
Descartes and Willebord Snell had determined how a ray of light is bent, or refracted, as it traverses regions of different densities, such as air and water. When the light paths through a raindrop are traced for red and blue light, one finds that the angle of deviation is different for the two colors because blue light is bent or refracted more than is the red light. This implies that when we see a rainbow and its band of colors we are looking at light refracted and reflected from different raindrops, some viewed at an angle of 42 degrees; some, at an angle 40 degrees, and some in between.
What makes a double rainbow?
Sometimes we see two rainbows at once, what causes this? We have followed the path of a ray of sunlight as it enters and is reflected inside the raindrop. But not all of the energy of the ray escapes part of the ray is reflected again and travels along inside the drop to emerge from the drop. The rainbow we normally see is called the primary rainbow and is produced by one internal reflection; the secondary rainbow arises from two internal reflections and the rays exit the drop at an angle of 50 degrees rather than the 42 degrees for the red primary bow. It is possible for light to be reflected more than twice within a raindrop, and one can calculate where the higher order rainbows might be seen; but these are never seen in normal circumstances.
Why is the sky brighter inside a rainbow?
Notice the contrast between the sky inside the arc and outside it. When one studies the refraction of sunlight on a raindrop one finds that there are many rays emerging at angles smaller than the rainbow ray, but essentially no light from single internal reflections at angles greater than this ray. Thus there is a lot of light within the bow, and very little beyond it. Because this light is a mix of all the rainbow colors, it is white. In the case of the secondary rainbow, the rainbow ray is the smallest angle and there are many rays emerging at angles greater than this one. Therefore the two bows combine to define a dark region between them - called Alexander's Dark Band, in honor of Alexander of Aphrodisias who discussed it some 1800 years ago!
What are Supernumerary Arcs?
In some rainbows, faint arcs just inside and near the top of the primary bow can be seen. These are called supernumerary arcs and were explained by Thomas Young in 1804 as arising from the within the drop. Young's work had a profound influence on theories of the physical nature of light and his studies of the rainbow were a fundamental element of this. Young interpreted light in terms of it being a wave of some sort and that when two rays are scattered in the same direction within a raindrop, they may interfere with each other. Depending on how the rays mesh together, the interference can be constructive, in which case the rays produce a brightening, or destructive, in which case there is a reduction in brightness. This phenomenon is clearly described in Nussenzveig's article, "The Theory of the Rainbow", in which he writes: "At angles very close to the rainbow angle the two paths through the droplet differ only slightly, and so the two rays interfere constructively. When the difference equals half of the wave-length, the interference is completely destructive; at still greater angles the beams reinforce again. The result is a periodic variation in the intensity of the scattered light, a series of alternatively bright and dark band."
The "purity" of the colors of the rainbow depends on the size of the raindrops. Large drops (diameters of a few millimeters) give bright rainbows with well defined colors; small droplets (diameters of about 0.01 mm) produce rainbows of overlapping colors that appear nearly white. And remember that the models that predict a rainbow arc all assume spherical shapes for raindrops.
There is never a single size of water drops in rain but a mixture of many sizes and shapes. This results in a composite rainbow. Raindrops generally don't "grow" to radii larger than about 0.5 cm without breaking up because of collisions with other raindrops, although occasionally drops a few millimeters larger in radius have been observed when there are very few drops (and so few collisions between the drops) in a rainstorm. Bill Livingston suggests: "If you are brave enough, look up during a thunder shower at the falling drops. Some may hit your eye (or glasses), but this is not fatal. You will actually see that the drops are distorted and are oscillating."
It is the surface tension of water that moulds raindrops into spherical shapes, if no other forces are no acting on them. But as a drop falls in the air, the 'drag' causes a distortion in its shape, making it somewhat flattened. Deviations from a spherical shape have been measured by suspending drops in the air stream of a vertical wind tunnel (Pruppacher and Beard, 1970, and Pruppacher and Pitter, 1971). Small drops of radius less than 140 microns (0.014 cm) remain spherical, but as the size of the drop increases, the flattening becomes noticeable. For drops with a radius near 0.14 cm, the height/width ratio is 0.85. This flattening increases for larger drops.
Spherical drops produce symmetrical rainbows, but rainbows seen when the sun is near the horizon are often observed to be brighter at their sides, the vertical part, than at their top. Alistair Fraser has explained this phenomenon as resulting from the complex mixture of size and shape of the raindrops. The reflection and refraction of light from a flattened water droplet is not symmetrical. For a flattened drop, some of the rainbow ray is drops only as we view them horizontally; thus the rainbow produced by the large drops is is bright at its base. Near the top of the arc only small spherical drops produce the fainter rainbow.
What does a rainbow look like through dark glasses?
This is a "trick" question because the answer depends on whether or not your glasses are Polaroid. When light is reflected at certain angles it becomes polarized, and it has been found that the rainbow angle is close to that angle of reflection at which incident, unpolarized light (sunlight) is almost completely polarized. So if you look at a rainbow with Polaroid sunglasses and rotate the lenses around the line of sight, part of the rainbow will disappear!
What are Reflection Rainbows?
A reflection rainbow is defined as one produced by the reflection of the source of incident light (usually the sun). Photographs of them are perhaps the most impressive of rainbow photographs. The reflected rainbow may be considered as a combination of two rainbows produced by sunlight coming from two different directions - one directly from the sun, the other from the reflected image of the sun. The angles are quite different and therefore the elevation of the rainbow arcs will be correspondingly different.
What is a Lunar Rainbow?
A full moon is bright enough to have its light refracted by raindrops just as is the case for the sun. Moonlight is much fainter, of course, so the lunar rainbow is not nearly as bright as one produced by sunlight. Lunar rainbows have infrequently been observed since the time of Aristotle or before.


Taken from Hello Magazine, No. 250, October 2006.

THE MYSTERIOUS RAINBOW (1)

What is a rainbow?
Author Donald Ahrens in his text Meteorology Today describes a rainbow as "one of the most spectacular light shows observed on earth". Indeed the traditional rainbow is sunlight spread out into its spectrum of colors and diverted to the eye to the observer by water droplets. The "bow" part of the world describes the fact that the rainbow is a group of nearly circular arcs of color all having a commong center.
Where is the sun when you see a rainbow?
This is a good question to start thinking about the physical process that gives rise to a rainbow. Most people have never noticed that the sun is always behind you when you face a rainbow, and that the center of the circular arc of the rainbow is in the direction opposite of that of the sun. The rain, of course, is in the direction of the rainbow.
What makes the bow?
A question like this calls for a proper physical answer. We will discuss the formation of a rainbow by raindrops. It is a problem in optic that was first clearly discussed by Rene Descartes in 1637. An interesting historical account of this is to be found in Carl Boyer's book, The Rainbow From Myth to Mathematics. Descartes simplified the study of the rainbow by reducing it to a study of one water droplet and how it interacts with light falling upon it.
He writes: "Considering that this bow appears not only in the sky, but also in the air near us, whenever there are drops of water illuminated by the sun, as we can see in certain fountains, I readily decided that it arose only from the way in which the rays of light act on these drops and pass from them to our eyes. Further, knowing that the drops are round, as has been formerly proved, and seeing that whether they are larger or smaller, the appearance of the bow is not changed in any way, I had the idea of making a very large one, so that I could examine it better.
Descartes describes how he held up a large sphere in the sunlight and looked at the sunlight reflected in it. He wrote, "I found that if the sunlight came, for example, from the part of the sky which is marked AFZ and my eye was at the point E, when I put the globe in position BCD, its part D appeared all red, and much more brilliant than the rest of it; and that whether I approached it or receded from it, or put it on my right or my left, or even turned it round about my head, provided that the line DE always made an angle of about forty-two degrees with the line EM, which we are to think f as drawn from the center of the sun to the eye, the part D appeared always similarly red; but that as soon as I made this angle DEM even a little larger, the red color disappeared; and if I made the angle a little smaller, the color did not disappear all at once, but divided itself first as if into two parts, less brilliant, and in which I could see yellow, blue, and other colors ... When I examined more particularly, in the globe BCD, what it was which made the part D appear red, I found that it was the rays of the sun which, coming from A to B, bend on entering the water at the point B, and to pass to C, where they are reflected to D, and bending there again as they pass out of the water, proceed to the point."
This quotation illustrates how the shape of the rainbow is explained. To simplify the analysis, consider the path of a ray of monochromatic light through a single spherical raindrop. Imagine how light is refracted as it enters the raindrop, then how it is reflected by the internal, curved, mirror-like surface of the raindrop, and finally how it is refracted as it emerges from the drop. If we then apply the results for a single raindrop to a whole collection of raindrops in the sky, we can visualize the shape of the bow.
The traditional diagram to illustrate this is shown here as adapted from Humphreys, Physics of the Air. It represents the path of one light ray incident on a water droplet from the direction SA. As the light beam enters the surface of the drop at A, it is bent a little and strikes the inside wall of the drop at B, where it is reflected back to C. As it emerges from the drop it is refracted (bent) again into the direction CE. The angle D represents a measure of the deviation of the emergent ray from its original direction. Descartes calculated this deviation for a ray of red light to be about 180-42 or 138 degrees.
The ray drawn here is significant because it represents the ray that has the smallest angle of deviation of all the rays incident upon the raindrop. It is called the Descarte or rainbow ray and much of the sunlight as it is refracted and reflected through the raindrop is focused along this ray. Thus the reflected light is diffuse and weaker except near the direction of this rainbow ray. It is this concentration of rays near the minimum deviation that gives rise to the arc of rainbow.
The sun is so far away that we can, to a good approximation, assume that sunlight can be represented by a set of parallel rays all falling on the water globule and being refracted, reflected internally, and refracted again on emergence from the droplet in a manner like the figure. Descartes writes.
I took my pen and made an accurate calculation of the paths of the rays which fall on the different points of a globe of water to determine at which angles, after two refractions and one or two of reflections they will come to the eye, and I then found that after one reflection and two refractions there are many more rays which can be seen at an angle of from forty-one to forty-two degrees that at any smaller angle; and that there are none which can be seen at a larger angle" (the angle he is referring to is 180 - D).
A typical raindrop is spherical and therefore its effect on sunlight is symmetrical about an axis through the center of the drop and the source of light (in this case the sun). Because of this symmetry, the two-dimensional illustration of the figure serves us well and the complete picture can be visualized by rotating the two dimensional illustration about the axis of symmetry. The symmetry of the focusing effect of each drop is such that whenever we view a raindrop along the line of sight defined by the rainbow ray, we will see a bright spot of reflected/refracted sunlight. Referring to the figure, we see that the rainbow ray for red light makes an angle of 42 degrees between the direction of the incident sunlight and the line of sight. Therefore, as long as the raindrop is viewed along a line of sight that makes this angle with the direction of incident light, we will see a brightening.
We don't see a full circle because the earth gets in the way. The lower the sun is to the horizon, the more of the circle we see - right at sunset, we would see a full semicircle of the rainbow with the top of the arch 42 degrees above the horizon. The higher the sun is in the sky, the smaller is the arch of the rainbow above the horizon.

Taken from Hello Magazine, No. 250, October 2006.