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Colors of Light

White light is a mixture of colors that becomes separated when passed through a prism due to dispersion. Dispersion occurs when light refracts as it passes from one medium to another of different density, such as from air into a prism. Within the spectrum of visible light, violet has the highest frequency and energy while red has the lowest, and they therefore refract the most and least, respectively, when light passes through the prism. This separation of colors is what allows a prism to break white light into the visible color spectrum of red, orange, yellow, green, blue, indigo, and violet.

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94 views12 pages

Colors of Light

White light is a mixture of colors that becomes separated when passed through a prism due to dispersion. Dispersion occurs when light refracts as it passes from one medium to another of different density, such as from air into a prism. Within the spectrum of visible light, violet has the highest frequency and energy while red has the lowest, and they therefore refract the most and least, respectively, when light passes through the prism. This separation of colors is what allows a prism to break white light into the visible color spectrum of red, orange, yellow, green, blue, indigo, and violet.

Uploaded by

Zion James
Copyright
© © All Rights Reserved
We take content rights seriously. If you suspect this is your content, claim it here.
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Download as PPTX, PDF, TXT or read online on Scribd
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COLORS OF

LIGHT
 Light is a kind of energy that can travel through space in a form of
wave.
Light from the sun or flashlights looks white, but it is really a
mixture of many colors.

The colors in white light are red, orange, yellow, green, blue indigo
and violet.

We highlight here the arrangement of colors of light as ROYGBIV


when dispersion happens.

Dispersion is a kind of refraction which provided us colors of light.


This phenomenon is observed when white light passes through a
prism.
 A prism is a transparent optical element with flat and
polished surfaces that disperses light. 3

 Usually a prism has a triangular base and rectangular sides.


 Prisms can be made from any transparent materials like
glass, plastic or fluorite.
 Water in a glass can also acts as prism. It also breaks white
light into constituent colors namely: red, orange, yellow,
green, blue, indigo and violet (ROYGBIV).
 You can see these colors when you look at a rainbow in our
sky.
 A rainbow is caused by both the reflection and refraction of
light in water droplets on the Earth’s atmosphere.
 The water droplets serve as tiny prisms that refract, reflect,
and disperse sunlight into spectrum of light appearing in
the sky.
HIERARCHY OF
COLORS
The frequency of light wave refers to the number of5

waves that move past a certain point in one second.


Frequency is generally measured in Hertz, the units
of cycles per second. Color has the frequency ranging
from 430 trillion Hertz to 750 trillion Hertz.
Waves can also go beyond and below those
frequencies, but they are not visible to the human
eye.
6
 Wave frequency is related to wave energy.
 The more energy in the wave, the higher its frequency.
 The lower the frequency is, the less energy in the wave.
 When it comes to light waves, violet has the highest energy while red has the
lowest energy.
 Related to energy and frequency is the wavelength, or the distance between
corresponding points on subsequent waves.
 You can measure wavelength from peak to peak, trough to trough or between
two consecutive corresponding points of waves.
 Within the band of visible light, the different wavelengths are perceived by
people as different colors.
 The shortest wavelength is violet, and the longest wavelength is red.
7

BENDING OF COLORS
 Rainbows are created just like the colors of
light appeared in previous activity.
 A prism separates the white light into the
different colors of light.
 With the different refractive indices of the
colors of light, bending is also different for each
of the colors of light.
 In this lesson, you will know which color bend
the most and which color bend the least
 Light exhibits the characteristics of a wave.
 It moves in its maximum speed in vacuum but this speed decreases as it moves along
different media.
 Refraction is the bending of light when it travels from one medium to another.
 When light crosses the boundary of two media of different optical density, a change in
speed takes place.
 The optical density is the measurement of a component’s ability to slow the transmission of
light.
 This change in speed is manifested by the bending of the light ray.
 A known indicator of the optical density of a material is the index of refraction of the
material (n).
 The index of refraction of a material is a quantity that compares the speed of light in a
material to its speed in a vacuum.
In figure 7, light travels from air to the prism.
 When the light enters the glass, which is
denser than air, it slows down and is bent.
 You observe that the angle of incidence (1)
is greater than the angle of refraction (2).
 You can see that the light ray refracts or
bends towards the normal.
 Thus, light bends towards the normal when
travelling from a less dense medium to a
higher density medium and light bends away
from the normal when travelling from denser
to less dense medium like when light ray
leaves the prism.
 The incoming ray is called the incident
ray from medium 1 and the outgoing
ray is the refracted ray in medium 2,
and the associated angles are the angle
of incidence and the angle of
refraction.
 When white light enters a prism,
separation into seven different colors
is observed.
 The refractive indices of the different
colors of light indicate that it travels at
different speeds in the prism which
accounts for the different degrees of
bending.
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In terms of frequency and energy of colors, blue, indigo and


violet are the ones with the highest frequency and energy.
These colors are the ones that are bent the most. At the end of
the spectrum, red is the one with the lowest frequency and
energy. It is the color that is bent the least and violet is the
most bent.

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