2007-12-22 19:52:44 · 6 answers · asked by maisha 2 in Science & Mathematics ➔ Physics
White light splits into seven (7) colors due to their differences in their wavelengths.Red being the longest and violet being the shortest.
2007-12-22 20:03:44 · answer #1 · answered by bernie_bph 5 · 1⤊ 0⤋
In fact, there are infinitely many colors between ANY two colors.
The colors are simply wavelengths of light. Light could have a wavelength of 650 nanometers. Most people would describe this light as "red". However, if the light had a wavelength of 651 nanometers, is it still red? Most people couldn't tell the difference.
So, we break up the light we can see (which is called visible light) into bands of color that are completely arbitrary. There is no magical divider between red and orange. It's a continuum.
The entire spectrum, from largest wavelength to smallest, broken up into our commonly-used (but still arbitrary) categories is:
Radio > Microwaves > Infrared > ROYGBIV > Ultraviolet > X-rays > Gamma rays
2007-12-23 04:02:47 · answer #2 · answered by lithiumdeuteride 7 · 2⤊ 0⤋
lithiumdeuteride is right that theres infinite colours, but the reason is simply that white light is actually composed of all those 7 distinguishable colours
it splits when refracted because those colours have differetn wavelengeths, and so each is refracted a different amount, check wikipedia.org if your unsure about refraction
2007-12-23 04:04:55 · answer #3 · answered by Anonymous · 0⤊ 1⤋
It only appears to split into seven colours, those are the only frequencies that our eyes see as colours.
2007-12-23 22:14:11 · answer #4 · answered by johnandeileen2000 7 · 0⤊ 0⤋
Because light with different frequencies (colours) propagate with different speeds through a transparent medium their diffractive indexes being different and so they are diffracted at different angles for the same incidence angle.
2007-12-23 04:05:23 · answer #5 · answered by Anonymous · 0⤊ 1⤋
REFLECTION!
2007-12-23 04:05:32 · answer #6 · answered by Anonymous · 0⤊ 1⤋