Colors according to Newton

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The first observation that light is made up of different colors was made by Newton who decomposed white light into its components through a prism.

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Sir Isaac Newton

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The first to comprehend the structure of light as a physical entity was Sir Isaac Newton.

Sir Isaac Newton
(1643-1727)

Through a very simple experiment, he demonstrated that white light was composed of colors. However, he believed that the number of colors was discrete, as indicated in his chart representing his observations.

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Isaac Newton's experiment to study light

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Newton set up a simple arrangement with a prism to decompose light and thereby study its structure:

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Spectrum according to Newton

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Newton used a prism to decompose light into its components, believing he could identify a finite number of colors:

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The light and its colors

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A rainbow shows us that the light illuminating it is broken down into multiple colors. In fact, upon careful observation, you can see that there are multiple rainbows.

This is because each water droplet acts as a tiny circular prism, allowing for multiple refractions and the creation of multiple rainbows.

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