What is light?

Today we became detectives. We read a book where the characters were trying to solve the mystery of how rainbows are made. We then had to see if we could make a rainbow ourselves. We had tables set up with torches, paper, glasses, mirrors and cd’s. We quickly set to work trying out different hypotheses and techniques to make a rainbow. Some of us were more successful than others but after a few modifications and even more hints, we had rainbows covering the walls of our room:

     

                 

                               

One of the most important experiments on light was made by Sir Isaac Newton. He discovered that sunshine (white light) is made up of many colours. Sir Isaac Newton passed a beam of white light through a prism, which allows light to spread out into a band of six colours.