[ohinever]

Sorry to re-activate this thread but exactly this happened to me yesterday.

I was driving eastward along the a303 in England yesterday afternoon when I noticed a double rainbow. "Very pretty" I thought. After turning a bend it seemed that the rainbows were emanating from opposite sides of the road, so that I was driving into them, which in itself was pretty amazing.

I then turned another bend and to my absolute shock could see the end of the rainbow, up ahead just to the left of the road. As I got near, the end of the rainbow became part of the road itself. I was aware of passing through colours, but sadly quickly as I was travelling 70 m.p.h. at the time. What I also noticed once I had seemingly passed through, was that a beam of rainbow colour seemed to be arcing into the front of the car.

The whole experience only lasted 5-6 seconds in total, and typically and sadly I was alone so could not photograph any of this.

I know there must be a rational explanation - I am a medical doctor so not prone to magical thinking, but that doesn't mean it wasn't a magical experience.

I am actually still smiling now writing this.

I've been through the end of a rainbow!!

[RD]

... to my absolute shock could see the end of the rainbow ...
... I know there must be a rational explanation ...

Something that looked like a rainbow , but created by diffraction rather than dispersion , see ...
  http://www.atoptics.co.uk/rainbows/notabow.htm

[Pmb]

I can't say exactly what it was that you experienced but it's not possible for someone to actually be inside a rainbow because they don't have a particular location but only exist according to an observer, whether the observer is a camera or you eye.

After I read this more carefully I'll try to figure out exactly what it was you saw.

[cheryl j]

I had a similar rainbow experience. I was driving along and saw a very bright rainbow, smaller than usual, and as I approached it, it appeared to begin and end in this one field. I stopped my car and got out. As I got closer it became more of a ring shape, beginning and ending not far from my feet.

I posted the above in a similar thread: http://www.thenakedscientists.com/forum/index.php?topic=18551.msg423468#msg423468

Dlorde offered this explanation which I thought made sense:

"To drive or walk through a 'rainbow' effect, there has to be spray in the immediate vicinity to locally refract the light and maintain the image until you pass the edge of the cone of visibility. As others have said, it's a virtual image."

[Peter Steadman]

Once upon a time I crashed into a rainbow. I got out to get its insurance details, but it just vanished in to less moist, thin air. Its going to have a smaller pot of gold once claims direct do what they do. My car was a total write off, and all I got for it in the end was a hand full of magic beans. Lucky, I was able to swap them with this guy for a cow. It sadly died though, turns out they can only go up stairs. I now have a Bovinae corpus in my bathroom thanks to this rainbow. It smells a bit, but it is fun to poke with sticks.

[Karen W. (OP)]

lol...lol...Like poking fun at my thread! lol..Funny thing is I have been given the scientific information about how a rainbow comes to be, and also that there is no end..but none of the explanations explain how the striped color from the rainbow, was shining on my van as I drove through the rainbows end! My eyesight was good and I was not then, nor am I now a nut job...lol. I truely am, still amazed, and I will never forget it! However I would like a more scientific answer then, "you were seeing things" because rainbows don't work like that! How about I really DID see it, drive thru it, So what phenomonen may have occurred out of the ordinary which could have caused our refraction of light to actually  change the outcome of the rainbows end and also allow us to see the colors on the car! Also the rainbow's color coming down in front of the bushes and on the road as I passed through it at the end.. Further more the second rainbow appeared as soon as I drove out of the color bands, and could be seen at a distance over the mountain ahead...? Scientific evidence explain that please...don't want to hear  how it was all in my head when it absolutely was not!
Your story is cute...but I wont poke sticks at it....lol...

[Peter Steadman]

I've walked through a rainbow created by spray from a waterfall, I perceived it to be all around me. Though, technically it was a waterfall-spraybow, lol. I do believe you!! The light is refracted by water droplets the same as light in a prism. I can walk through a prism-bow, there for, I can walk through any source of refracted light, as long as the conditions are right. In a crazy way reality is virtual, we see photons aka energy, that has bounced off matter, another kind of energy. The photons hit are cones and rods where transduction occurs. The discrimination threshold of our sight interprets the matter to be solid, even though it's mostly empty space.

Just out of curiosity, was it bellow freezing that day, or near 12:00?

[Karen W. (OP)]

I missed this is....The time was actually closer to 6:15pm and it had been guite cold to the point of hailing before the rain down pour...it was then clear and the water was gone from the road but I was on my way home from work in the evening..and I was excited because the rainbow was about 6
minutes drive from work, to where it came down on the road by my home! about 30 ft left of the river bank, with river willow trees, bushes, and wild sweet peas .... in between river and rainbows end...