Why does the white light split into different colors when it passes through the prism?

Answer 1

1) White light is a mixture of different colors in the first place.

2) These colors have different indices of refraction - they bend at slightly different angles when they pass from air to glass.

Answer 2

The different parts of the white light mixture separate according to their frequency as they go through the prism. The fact that they are all traveling at the same speed has nothing to do with it.

All the light passing through a prism is bent (refracted). Higher frequencies are bent more than lower frequencies so reds pass through straighter than blues, and greens and yellows fall somewhere between.

Answer 3

To understand this, it must first be understood that light isn't monochromatic or of single wavelength. It consists of waves of many wavelengths depicting different colors. Thus when such a light (like of sun) passes through a prism every wave of a certain wavelength refracts with a different angle, distributing a single light beam into different colors!

Answer 4

As composite white light enters into the glass medium at an angle of incidence, the different colours having different wavelength experiences different angle of refraction for that same angle of incidence. This is mainly because glass medium has different refractive indices for different wavelength or different frequency. Different colours traverse with different speed in the glass medium. Violet has the lowest and red has highest speed. Any way their speed is lower than that in air. All colours have the same speed in air medium. So they reach different points on the other refracting face of the prism and they come out in different directions. If we allow only parallel rays to fall on the prism we would have a pure spectrum without any overlapping of colours.

Answer 5

"White" is actually a mixture of frequencies (a LOT more than 7),

and each frequency is bent a different amount.

That "7" is just an arbitrary result of trying to name the resultant colors of a rainbow.

Answer 6

White light is actually made up of the rainbow colours, a prism simply proves that.