Prism shaped pavement light redirecting sunlight through total internal reflection. Credit: glassian.org In the beginning, vault covers used round plano-convex lenses or even just flat glasses.

They reflect off the rear face ... This means that the light leaving the prism is spread out into its different colours, a process called dispersion. This experiment is recorded as first being ...

The incandescent light bulb was one of the first early applications ... optics and the work of skilled glassmakers who constructed prism tiles, deck prisms, and vault lights.

Newton was also the first to understand the rainbow, and to refract white light with a prism into its component ... Newtonian telescopes use a reflecting mirror to avoid the colour distortion ...

acts like a prism, splitting the light into individual colours. The thinner the slices, the greater the chance of observing a ...