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White light is dispersed by a prism into the colors of the visible spectrum. The visible spectrum is the band of the electromagnetic spectrum that is visible to the human eye. Electromagnetic radiation in this range of wavelengths is called visible light (or simply light). The optical spectrum is sometimes considered to be the same as the ...
A compact fluorescent lamp seen through an Amici prism. In optics and in wave propagation in general, dispersion is the phenomenon in which the phase velocity of a wave depends on its frequency; [ 1] sometimes the term chromatic dispersion is used for specificity to optics in particular. A medium having this common property may be termed a ...
Passing white light through a prism splits it up into the several colours of light observed in the visible spectrum between 400 nm and 780 nm. If radiation having a frequency in the visible region of the EM spectrum reflects off an object, say, a bowl of fruit, and then strikes the eyes, this results in visual perception of the scene.
This can be used to separate a beam of white light into its constituent spectrum of colors. Prisms will generally disperse light over a much larger frequency bandwidth than diffraction gratings, making them useful for broad-spectrum spectroscopy. Furthermore, prisms do not suffer from complications arising from overlapping spectral orders ...
In physics, the term "light" may refer more broadly to electromagnetic radiation of any wavelength, whether visible or not. [ 4][ 5] In this sense, gamma rays, X-rays, microwaves and radio waves are also light. The primary properties of light are intensity, propagation direction, frequency or wavelength spectrum, and polarization.
A dispersive prism can be used to break white light up into its constituent spectral colors (the colors of the rainbow) to form a spectrum as described in the following section. Other types of prisms noted below can be used to reflect light, or to split light into components with different polarizations .
In the physical sciences, the term spectrum was introduced first into optics by Isaac Newton in the 17th century, referring to the range of colors observed when white light was dispersed through a prism. [ 1][ 2] Soon the term referred to a plot of light intensity or power as a function of frequency or wavelength, also known as a spectral ...
An example of spectroscopy: a prism analyses white light by dispersing it into its component colors. Spectroscopy is the field of study that measures and interprets electromagnetic spectra. [1] [2] In narrower contexts, spectroscopy is the precise study of color as generalized from visible light to all bands of the electromagnetic spectrum.