Why does red bend the least

Many people remember this by the first letters that spell Roy G. A prism works because the different colors of light travel at different speeds inside the glass.

Because the colors of light travel at different speeds, they get bent by different amounts and come out all spread out instead of mixed up. Violet travels the slowest so it is on the bottom and red travels the fastest so is on the top.

This is because what is called the index of refraction, the ratio of the speed of light in a vacuum to the speed of light in a material , is increased for the slower moving waves i. The higher index of refraction means that violet light is the most bent, and red is then the least bent because of its lower index of refraction, and the other colors fall somewhere in between.

When the air is full of water, like after a rainstorm, the water droplets act like a prism and can make a rainbow. Rainbows are circular in shape because the prisms raindrops that created them are spherical.

U niversity of W isconsin —Madison. In most transparent materials the interaction goes up with the energy of the photons in the light. Since shorter wavelengths have higher energies refraction increases as we go from red to violet, so violet light refracts more than red light.

If you're interested to know more about why refraction usually increases at shorter wavelengths there is an excellent but rather technical discussion in Why do prisms work why is refraction frequency dependent? There is a detailed discussion of the mechanism of diffraction in Why does wavelength affect diffraction?

Sign up to join this community. The best answers are voted up and rise to the top. Stack Overflow for Teams — Collaborate and share knowledge with a private group. Create a free Team What is Teams? Learn more. I would like to know if violet bends the least or red [closed] Ask Question. Asked 5 years, 8 months ago. Active 5 years, 8 months ago. Viewed 2k times. Improve this question. The problem is, red and violet are not next to each other on the color spectrum. In fact, they are at opposite ends of the spectrum.

It is scientifically impossible for red and violet to merge together to create the color pink. Blue or violet light has the shortest wavelength.

White light is a combination of all colors in the color spectrum. It has all the colors of the rainbow. This diagram shows the relative wavelengths of blue light and red light waves. Blue light has shorter waves, with wavelengths between about and nanometers.

Red light has longer waves, with wavelengths around to nm. Blue light has a higher frequency and carries more energy than red light. Save my name, email, and website in this browser for the next time I comment. Skip to content. Search for:.