Experimentation

Today I had some fun searching the Physics classroom for a prism, which I eventually got my hands on. In my previous post, I showed how a simple spectrometer works. For my presentation, I plan on using this recently acquired prism in order to break up white light to show the basic concept. Since I don't have a camera handy right now, here's a picture of another person's prism set up.

In order to break up the light, you shine a white light through a slit (in order to concentrate the light. I used a light box that my class has used for labs). Then, you shine the concentrated line of light through the prism, where a nice little rainbow will appear either on the ground or opposite structure at an angle from the prism. Lab use "prism spectrometers" work in a similar sense in that, instead of a white light, an element with an electric current running through it is shined at the prism, thus breaking the light and displaying only the colors the element "gives off." My personal rainbow was a lot weaker, but I'm going to experiment with brighter lights to see if I can get a better result.