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PRISM PROject File

Sneha Verma thanks her physics teacher and principal for allowing her to complete a project on prisms. The opportunity helped her improve her research skills. She also thanks her friends and family for their encouragement and assistance. The document then provides details on what a prism is, how it works by refracting different wavelengths of light at different angles, the different types of prisms, how total internal reflection occurs in prisms, common uses of prisms, a brief history of Isaac Newton's experiments with prisms, and Sneha's sources for the project.

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105 views

PRISM PROject File

Sneha Verma thanks her physics teacher and principal for allowing her to complete a project on prisms. The opportunity helped her improve her research skills. She also thanks her friends and family for their encouragement and assistance. The document then provides details on what a prism is, how it works by refracting different wavelengths of light at different angles, the different types of prisms, how total internal reflection occurs in prisms, common uses of prisms, a brief history of Isaac Newton's experiments with prisms, and Sneha's sources for the project.

Uploaded by

vabhay22435
Copyright
© © All Rights Reserved
We take content rights seriously. If you suspect this is your content, claim it here.
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Download as PDF, TXT or read online on Scribd
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ACKNOWLEDGEMENT

I, Sneha Verma of class 12th of


your school, has got the
wonderful opportunity to express
special gratitude to my physics
teacher and principal of my
school, who gave me the
opportunity to do this wonderful
project on Physics..
The opportunity to participate in
this project has helped me
improve my research skills and I
am really grateful to them.
I am also thankful to my
friends and family who helped
me a lot and encouraged me in
completion of this project.
CONTENTS

• About prism

• How does a prism work

• Types of prisms

• Total internal reflection in a prism

• Uses

• History of prism

• Bibliography
What is a prism..
• Prism, in optics, is a piece of
glass or other transparent material
cut with precise angles and plane
faces, useful for analyzing and
reflecting light.
• An ordinary triangular prism can
separate white light into its
constituent colours, called
a spectrum.
• Each colour, or wavelength, making up
the white light is bent, or refracted, a
different amount; the shorter wavelengths
(those toward the violet end of the
spectrum) are bent the most, and the
longer wavelengths (those toward the red
end of the spectrum) are bent the least.
• Prisms of this kind are used in certain
spectroscopes, instruments for analyzing
light and for determining the identity
and structure of materials that emit or
absorb light.
HOW DOES A PRISM WORK?

In the 1600s, Isaac Newton did a series of


experiments with prisms and light. He showed that
prisms not only split light into the familiar
rainbow colors, but can also recombine them.
The glass of a prism, and the angles of its sides,
work together to make a fascinating optical tool.

• Effects of Light:
When light passes from the air into glass, it slows
down, and when it leaves the glass, it speeds up
again. If the light hits the glass at an angle instead
of dead-on, it undergoes refraction. The angle
at which it hits the glass is not the same as
the angle it travels inside the glass. The light is no
longer moving in a straight line, but gets bent at the
surface. The same thing happens when the light
leaves the prism-it bends again.
• Snell's Law:
An optical principle called Snell’s Law
predicts exactly how this happens.
Snell’s Law deals with the angles that
light enters and leaves a prism, and
something called the index of
refraction(REFRACTIVE INDEX). The
index of refraction shows how much light
slows down when it goes into the glass.
It states that for light of a given colour
and a given set of media, the ratio of
the sine of the angle of incidence to
the sine of the angle of refraction is
constant.
• Second Prism:
The fact that a prism can break light into colors
was known before Newton. But Newton asked
what would happen if he put a second prism in
the location of the colors in inverted position. If
the inverted second prism caught all the
colors on one of its surfaces, white light came
out of the other side. The same properties
that spread the colors apart worked in reverse
to reassemble them.
TYPES OF PRISMS
• Dispersive Prisms: They are used to
break up light into its constituent
spectral colours. The refractive index
depends on the frequency. The white
light that enters the prism has a mixture
of different frequencies, and each
frequency bends differently. Eg. Abbe
prism, Amici prism, Compound prism.
• Reflective Prisms: These are used for reflecting
light, for flipping, inverting, rotating, or displacing the
light beam. They are generally used for erecting the
image in binoculars or single-lens reflex cameras.
Without the use of prisms, the image would become
upside down for the very user. Reflective prisms often
use total internal reflection for achieving higher
reflectivity. Eg. Porro prism, Pentaprism, Dove prism

• Deflecting prisms: These are prisms which are used


to deflect the light by a fixed angle. WEDGE PRISM is
a type of deflecting prism.
A wedge prism
TOTAL INTERNAL REFLECTION
IN A PRISM

• Total Internal Reflection: Total internal reflection


(TIR) is the phenomenon in which waves arriving at
the interface (boundary) from one medium to another
(e.g., from water to air) are not refracted into the
second ("external") medium, but completely reflected
back into the first ("internal") medium.

• Total reflecting prism:


1) A total reflecting prism is defined as a prism with an
angle of 90 degrees between its two refracting
surfaces and the other two angles each equal to 45
degrees.
2) When light is incident normally on any of the prism's
faces, it suffers total internal reflection within the prism.
Three actions of production are as follows:
• To deviate a light ray by 90 degrees.
• Deviate a light ray through 180 degrees.
• Erect the inverted image without causing deviation in
its path.
USES OF A PRISM
 Used in medical sciences:
Prisms are often used in ophthalmology to
help in diagnosing and treating a number of
eye diseases like esotropia, nystagmus,
amblyopia, exotropia etc.
Opthalmologists use the light reflected and
refracted from prisms for examining
different parts of the eye for problems.
Prisms also come in handy for redirecting
the light entering the eye for enhancing eye
vision.

 Optical Instruments:
Prisms are used in cameras, telescopes,
microscopes, and binoculars to manipulate
light and provide clearer images.
 In architecture: Prisms, as a shape,
are also used for building or constructing
roofs of houses so that the snow falls off
the roofs instead of accumulation on
them.

 Prism helps in understanding the


properties of light.
HISTORY OF PRISM
• In 1665, Isaac Newton was a young scientist studying at
Cambridge University in England. He was very interested in
learning all about light and colors.
• One bright sunny day, Newton darkened his room and made a
hole in his window shutter, allowing just one beam of sunlight
to enter the room. He then took a glass prism and placed it in the
sunbeam. The result was a spectacular multicolored band of
light just like a rainbow. The multicolored band of light is called
a color spectrum.
• Newton believed that all the colors he saw were in the sunlight
shining into his room.
• He thought he then should be able to combine the colors of the
spectrum and make the light white again. To test this, he placed
another prism upside-down in front of the first prism. He was
right. The band of colors combined again into white sunlight.
Newton was the first to prove that white light is made up of all
the colors that we can see.

Sir Issac Newton revealing the dispersive nature


of white light through a prism..
BIBLIOGRAPHY
SOURCES:
• NCERT textbook
• Help of physics teacher
• Websites: www.google.com
www.Wikipedia.com

I hope this would be a wonderful


project for diving into the interesting
research on A Prism…
Thanks to all who helped me to
complete the project !!

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