The Hidden Rainbow

Why it matters

Sunlight looks plain white — until a glass prism, or a million raindrops, take it apart. The rainbow was inside the white light the whole time.

The idea in plain words

The colour fan, decoded. Tap the terms.

white light = V+I+B+G+Y+O+R

Why does a second, inverted prism turn the rainbow back into white?

White again — Newton's proof that the prism sorts colours, never creates them

• the event: dispersion — the splitting of white light into its colours, because each colour bends a slightly different amount in glass
• the order: VIBGYOR — violet bends most, red least — the fixed order of the spectrum
• nature's demo: the rainbow — every raindrop is a tiny prism — sunlight enters, splits, reflects inside, and exits as colour
• It bends every colour back by the same amounts
• The fan closes

Predict first

White light passes through a glass prism. What comes out?

The prism SEPARATES what was already there: each colour bends by a slightly different amount (violet most, red least), fanning white into VIBGYOR — dispersion.

• a band of seven colours — violet to red (VIBGYOR) — correct
• white light, slightly dimmer
• the prism paints it with colour

What you do

Split white light into its seven colours — then add the upside-down second prism and put the rainbow back together into white.

Check yourself

In the spectrum from a prism, the colour that bends MOST is…

Violet turns hardest, red least — that spread IS the spectrum.

Dispersion proves that white light is…

You can't take apart what isn't there — the prism is a sorter, not a painter.

A rainbow appears when sunlight meets…

Rain + sunshine + you standing with your back to the Sun — the sky's own dispersion experiment.

• violet — correct
• red
• green
• a mixture of many colours — correct
• the purest single colour
• made by prisms
• millions of raindrops, each acting as a tiny prism — correct
• coloured clouds
• the Moon