Fyling Hall’s Year 6 have been making rainbows! In 1666, Isaac Newton made a discovery about light that led him to develop his Theory of Colour, a theory that still informs our understanding of light today. He placed a prism in front of ray of light, and he saw a rainbow of colours form. The rainbow of colours that Newton saw are known as the ‘Visible Spectrum’. It made him realise that although light looks white, it is actually made up of all the colours of the rainbow!
Just as a prism can split white light into different colours, so lights of different colour can be added together to make white light. The Y6 pupils used a colour wheel to show the colours of the spectrum that Newton discovered. There has never been a better time for making rainbows!
If you want to learn more about Newton’s discovery, take a look at this short video from BBC Earth Lab, in which Professor Brian Cox carries out and explains Newton’s Light Spectrum Experiment.