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breakdown into spectral colours

• In prism

  …ordinary triangular prism can separate white light into its constituent colours, called a spectrum. Each colour, or wavelength, making up the white light is bent, or refracted, a different amount; the shorter wavelengths (those toward the violet end of the spectrum) are bent the most, and the longer wavelengths (those…

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colour

• In colour: The nature of colour

  …these spectral colours re-created the white light. Although he recognized that the spectrum was continuous, Newton used the seven colour names red, orange, yellow, green, blue, indigo, and violet for segments of the spectrum by analogy with the seven notes of the musical scale.

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