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29-07-2020
Column: Nature Notes - TRUE COLOURS
Column: Nature Notes - TRUE COLOURS
Colour is such an important part of how we see and understand the world around us – but what is colour? No object actually has any intrinsic, inherent colour itself – the factors that determine the appearance of colour is light, its interaction with matter and our visual perception. Colour is not a property of light; it is a property of the perception of light.
Light is electromagnetic waves – travelling energy in the form of vibrating electric and magnetic fields. The electromagnetic spectrum in principle is continuous and infinite, but the only band we can see is the visible spectrum of light.
Sunlight appears to be white, but by passing sunlight through two prisms Isaac Newton demonstrated that white light is actually a mixture of colours called the visible spectrum. We can see this in rainbows, when water in the atmosphere splits white light into the colours of the visible spectrum – red, orange, yellow, green, blue, indigo and violet (in order of longer to shorter wavelengths).

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