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This lesson covers colour and light as required by the Edexcel GCSE Physics specification (1PH0), Topic 5: Light and the Electromagnetic Spectrum. You need to understand the composition of white light, dispersion, primary and secondary colours, colour addition, why objects appear coloured, and how filters work.
White light is not a single colour — it is a mixture of all the colours of the visible spectrum. When white light is passed through a triangular glass prism, it is split into its component colours. This process is called dispersion.
Dispersion occurs because different colours (wavelengths) of light are refracted by different amounts when they pass through a prism:
The colours of the visible spectrum, in order of decreasing wavelength, are:
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