What is Sir Isaac Newtons experiment with light and prisms?
It was inspired because of Galileo’s telescope producing color blurs due to use of lenses. He shined white light through a prism and showed that white light is colorful, it consists of numerous colors when separated. The prism was made from a special type of glass which has a different refractive index for each frequency, and he could show that each color refracts by a different angle. All types of glass have variation of refractive index with frequency, just some more than others. Even water has variation of refractive index with frequency. Newton was later able to explain the mathematics behind why rainbows form. After Newton’s prism experiment, he said “forget using lenses” to make telescopes. He proposed to alternatively make telescopes with curved mirrors such that we avoid chromatic dispersion when observing the night sky.
