Send a beam of white sunlight through a glass prism and it fans out into a band of colour, the same spread you see in a rainbow. The prism has not added anything; it has simply sorted the colours that were there all along.
White light is a mixture of colours. A prism refracts each colour by a slightly different amount, so they separate into the spectrum: red, orange, yellow, green, blue, violet. Red is refracted the least and violet the most. This separation is dispersion.
Dispersion is the splitting of white light into the colours of the spectrum by a prism, because each colour is refracted by a different amount.
Monochromatic light is light of a single colour, that is a single frequency or wavelength. A prism refracts it at each face but does not disperse it, so it stays a single beam. The colours are already present in white light; the prism separates them.
Send white light into the prism and watch it split into its colours, with red bent least and violet most.
Four quick checks. Each correct answer earns XP and lights this skill on your star map.
Splitting white light into colours using a prism is called...
White light is...
A prism separates the colours because each colour...
Which colour is refracted (bent) the most by a prism?
The prism separates colours that white light already contains, bending each by a different amount.
Red light is refracted the least and violet the most, a pair that is easy to reverse. And the prism does not create the colours: they are already present in white light, and the prism simply separates them.
Unlocks once the four checks above are done. Worth more XP, written in the style of Paper 2.
When white light passes through a prism, the colour bent the least is...
A prism produces a spectrum because different colours of light...
The correct order of the spectrum from least to most refracted is...
That completes the light strand. The electromagnetic spectrum is next.