Accession No
1904
Brief Description
prism, 19th C
Origin
Maker
Class
optical
Earliest Date
1800
Latest Date
1900
Inscription Date
Material
glass; metal (brass)
Dimensions
length 121mm; breadth 30mm; height 28mm
Special Collection
Cavendish collection
Provenance
Transferred from the Cavendish Laboratory, University of Cambridge in 1974.
Inscription
Description Notes
Equilateral triangular prism mounted in brass endpiece. Tapped to fit a stand (not extant).
Condition fair (very chipped at other end from endpiece); complete.
References
Events
Description
Prism
A prism consists of a translucent piece of glass or crystal, usually triangular in cross section, which is used to separate light into a spectrum of its separate colours.
The instrument works because different wavelengths of light are refracted (bent) by different amounts as they enter and leave the prism; the shorter wavelengths (towards the blue end of the spectrum) are refracted by the greatest amount, and the longer wavelengths (towards the red end) are refracted the least. This spreads out normal white light, which is a mixture of all the different colours, into its constituent parts and produces the rainbow effect of a spectrum.
18/10/2002
Created by: Saffron Clackson on 18/10/2002
FM:42643
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