Accession No
1907.2
Brief Description
prism bottle, c.1875
Origin
Maker
Class
optical
Earliest Date
1875
Latest Date
1875
Inscription Date
Material
glass; paper (card and one other)
Dimensions
height 110mm; breadth 62mm; depth 60mm
Special Collection
Cavendish collection
Provenance
Transferred from the Cavendish Laboratory, University of Cambridge in 11/1974.
Inscription
‘L 189’ (painted on side)
Description Notes
Glass 60˚ prism bottle with ground stopper. Used for investigating the refractive properties of liquids. Card slip case.
Condition fair (needs cleaning); complete.
References
Events
Description
Prism bottles
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. These prism bottles are used to investigate how different liquids refract (bend) light.
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:40102
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