Light
A source of light can have many colors mixed and in different amounts (intensities). A rainbow, or prism, sends the different frequencies in different directions, making them individually visible at different angles. A graph of the intensity plotted against the frequency (showing the amount of each color) is the frequency spectrum of the light. When all the visible frequencies are present in equal amounts, the perceived color of the light is white, and the spectrum is a flat line. Therefore, flat-line spectrums in general are often referred to as white, whether they represent light or something else
Read more about this topic: Frequency Spectrum
Famous quotes containing the word light:
“Through the din and desultoriness of noon, even in the most Oriental city, is seen the fresh and primitive and savage nature, in which Scythians and Ethiopians and Indians dwell. What is echo, what are light and shade, day and night, ocean and stars, earthquake and eclipse, there? The works of man are everywhere swallowed up in the immensity of nature. The AEgean Sea is but Lake Huron still to the Indian.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)
“Signal smokes, war drums, feathered bonnets against the western sky. New messiahs, young leaders are ready to hurl the finest light cavalry in the world against Fort Stark. In the Kiowa village, the beat of drums echoes in the pulsebeat of the young braves. Fighters under a common banner, old quarrels forgotten, Comanche rides with Arapaho, Apache with Cheyenne. All chant of war. War to drive the white man forever from the red man’s hunting ground.”
—Frank S. Nugent (1908–1965)
“But thou beneath the sad and heavy line
Of death, doth waste all senseless, cold, and dark;
Where not so much as dreams of light may shine,
Nor any thought of greenness, leaf, or bark.”
—Henry Vaughan (1622–1695)