Question

What is called dispersion of light? What causes it?

Answer 1

Dear student,

Visible light is made of a mixture of frequencies of light. What we see as white light includes all the colors of the rainbow, from the high frequency violet to the low frequency red. When white light is passed through a triangular glass prism, it is separated into a spectrum of colors: red, orange, yellow, green, blue, indigo and violet. This process of separating white light into colors is known as dispersion.
Each color is characteristic of a distinct wave frequency; and different frequencies of light waves will bend varying amounts upon passage through a prism.Different frequencies of light bend or refract different amounts when passing through the prism and thus cause dispersion.
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