Create an easy prism

MATERIALS:

1. A transparent or glass bowl

2. Some fresh water

3. A small mirror

4. Sunlight

INSTRUCTIONS:

1. At first put some fresh water in the transparent bowl.

2. Then place the small mirror inside the bowl under the water.

3. Finally put the bowl on a place where sunlight will strike the mirror inside the bowl.

4. Now observe what happens.

RESULT:

You will see that the reflected sunlight has created a really beautiful spectrum of colors.

EXPLANATION:

We know that when light enters from one transparent medium to another transparent medium it bends on the boundary of those two mediums. The amount of bending depends on the nature of the mediums and also the color of the light. The white light of the sun is the sum of seven different basic colors. In vacuum, all colors of lights have the same speed, but in a medium different colors of lights have different speed. For example, red light is 1.8 times faster than violet light. Due to the difference of speed among the different colors of lights a spectrum is created when light comes through one transparent medium to another transparent medium. So we can say that, due to the composition of different colors in the sunlight light disperse and a spectrum is created.

MORE EXPLANATIONS:

In 1666 Sir Isaac Newton first came proved about the dispersion of light through a very easy and yet important experiment. He poke a hole on his window. In his dark room sunlight came through that hole and strike upon the wall. Then he placed a prism on the path of the light ray. Then he saw seven different colors of light instead of only white color of the sunlight. These seven colors are – violet, indigo, blue, green, yellow, orange and last but not least red. Sir Isaac Newton saw these seven colors one after another. Today to remember the name of the colors serially they were named VIBGYOR. Each of the seven characters of this word VIBGYOR is actually the first character of one of the seven colors. These seven colors are the basic colors and all the other colors of the world is the composition of two or more of these colors.

MORE EXPERIMENTS FOR YOU:

1. Use torch light instead of sunlight to see what happens.

2. Use the full moon light to see what happens.

3. Use red, blue or any other color of light instead of white light to see what happens.