LMR-046 · Light
Spectrum
The rainbow keeps going in both directions, forever.
§ A first look
§ Depths
Six ways into the same idea — from bedtime story to chalkboard. No order required.
L1 · Crayon
Told like a bedtime story.
For a curious 10-year-old. No jargon. Just a picture in your head.
When sunlight passes through a glass of water or a raindrop just right, the 'white' light splits into a rainbow. The rainbow is telling you that 'white' was a lie — it was really every colour at once, mashed together. But the rainbow your eyes see is only the part your eyes are equipped for. Just past the red end and just past the violet end, the rainbow keeps right on going in colours nobody's eye can see. The whole stretched-out rainbow, including the invisible bits on either side, is called the spectrum. Your eyes get one chapter of a very long book.
§ Strange but true
- 01Every element fingerprints its light. Read the rainbow of a distant star, and you know what it's made of.
- 02Helium was discovered in the Sun's spectrum 27 years before anyone found it on Earth.
- 03The cosmos is mostly hydrogen and helium. Everything else — your bones, your gold, your phone — is rounding error.
§ From the field journal
Spectrum
"The rainbow keeps going in both directions, forever."
— observed, sketched, not yet fully understood.
§ Nearby