• Question: Who discovered the spectrum

    Asked by to Roy, Rowena, Kieren on 20 Mar 2014. This question was also asked by .
    • Photo: Kieren Bradley

      Kieren Bradley answered on 20 Mar 2014:


      Issac Newton was probably one of the earliest people to realise that white light was actually a mixture of the rainbow colours by passing it through a prism. I think that other people may well have seen a rainbow and come to the same conclusion but never published anything.

    • Photo: Roy Adkin

      Roy Adkin answered on 20 Mar 2014:


      Yes…I think it was Newton. William Hershel did quite a neat experiment looking at the heating effects of different wavelengths of light…you might like to read it and even try to repeat his experiment!

    • Photo: Rowena Fletcher-Wood

      Rowena Fletcher-Wood answered on 20 Mar 2014:


      Newton did the prism splitting light experiment, but the WHOLE electromagnetic spectrum was discovered and put together by many scientists. Herschel discovered infrared and gamma radiation was discovered from studies on radium – a radioactive material sometimes found in bricks and mortar! Other kinds of radiation include microwaves and ultraviolet – these were discovered independenly at other times by other scientists. At the extreme end is high energy electrons which can have all kinds of different wavelengths depending on how fast they move.

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