SpectrumBen HinckleyAward: Top 100
School: bishop hartley high school This photo was taken by shining a beam of light at an angle through a triangular prism to refract the light into a rainbow, then reflected off a mirror and back onto my face. When the beam of light enters the prism, it travels at a speed slower than the speed of light, causing the beam to change its angle as it enters the prism (this is known as refraction). The degree to which the angle of the beam changes depends on the indexes of refraction of the medium it's exiting and entering, as well as the angle the beam is entering the medium relative to the normal of the surface, otherwise known as Snell's Law. However, when white light enters the prism, the different constituent wavelengths of light are refracted at different angles (as the refractive index also depends on the wavelength of light), separating the white light into a color spectrum. Red light has a higher wavelength than blue, so it has a lower refractive index than blue light, meaning the red light is bent less than the blue light. As each wavelength of light is refracted a different amount, it creates the order of the colors in the rainbow as we know it. As the light exits the prism, it is refracted again, but the white light remains separated into a color spectrum. The light is then reflected off of the mirror following the law of reflection and onto my face, and then into the camera lens. 
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