SEPARATING COLOURS: EXPERIMENT 🌈

Scientists classify the light given off from the Sun and standard light bulbs as white light.  We can't actually see white light. White light is made up of a whole range (or spectrum) of colours mixed together.

We can see this spectrum if we pass white light through a glass prism (a triangular glass block). This rainbow of colours is called the 'visible spectrum'. The visible spectrum contains the colours red, orange, yellow, green, blue, indigo, and violet. The colours of the light spectrum are easy to remember if you recall ROYGBIV.

The reason white light splits into the colours of the spectrum is because each colour is refracted at slightly different angles as it passes from air to glass.

SEPARATING COLOURS EXPERIMENT

AIM: To separate white light into the colours of the visible spectrum.
EQUIPMENT: Ray box, single-slit ray slide, power source, prism.
METHOD:
1. Set up a ray box with a single-slit ray slide. 
2. Place a glass prism in the correct area (Sci pad page) indicated below. 
3. Aim the single beam at the prism, ensuring that the beam of light is hitting the prism on a steep angle as indicated by the arrow on the diagram. You may need to adjust it slightly in order to get the spectrum to appear.
4. Complete the diagram by drawing the rays of coloured light exiting the prism. 

(i am aware this is a pink floyd logo but its what the experiment looked like ok)

RESULTS:
When the incident ray hit the correct angle of the prism we could see a narrow rainbow of colours streaming out the side, bent slightly inwards. This was a result in the white light being refracted at different angles as it travelled from glass to air, and so we could see the separate colours of the spectrum.