I’m in the market to buy a large decorative suncatcher with relatively few facets so it will create fewer but much larger rainbows on the walls. Well, not really rainbows, they’re spectrums, like from a prism.
So far my searches have found lots of suncatchers with tiny facets that I know will create a lot of tiny rainbows around a room, but I’d prefer a lower number of larger rainbows. Any recommendations? I’m willing to spend more to get nice big rainbows on the walls, say the size of a hand in a 10x12 bedroom.
Larger facets won’t make larger rainbows. To make larger rainbows, you need to either put the prism further away from whatever it’s projecting on, or you need to make it from a material with higher dispersion.
Well, I remember my grandmother owned a few different ones, and I could clearly see the difference in the sizes of the spectrums produced, in similarly sized rooms. One of the suncatchers was significantly larger than the others. It was somewhat rectangular, had relatively few facets, and the rainbows were the size of my hand, at around 8-10 feet away from where it was hung. Each seemed significantly brighter than the images cast by the smaller round many-faceted suncatchers she had. That’s the kind I’d like to buy now.
ETA: bear in mind that DST can affect if your prism(s) get sunlight or not. We had a suncatcher at our balcony door and it only got sunlight during standard time.
I had a door with a beveled edge around the glass. About ten in the morning, and three in the afternoon, if it was sunny out, I’d get fantastic rainbow streaks on the walls.
If you want to spread out your rainbows, so they’ll have greater angular spread from violet to red, use highly dispersive glass. Or else use diffraction gratings instead, with the line spacing chosen to optimize the spread.