In this extract from the new book Beautiful Experiments: An Illustrated History of Experimental Science, science writer Philip Ball explains how Isaac Newton transformed our understanding of light.

C, the cosmic speed limit, is the fastest anything in the universe can go. But how fast is that? And how do we know?

With this experiment, he proved for the first time that all the colors of the rainbow come from the light, and not directly from the prism. Isaac Newton did more experiments with light, and then ...

Learn about the spectrum of colours found in visible light, how to split white light and the primary and secondary colours of light in this guide for KS3 physics students aged 11-14 from BBC Bitesize.

Learn about the spectrum of colours found in visible light, how to split white light and the primary and secondary colours of light in this guide for KS3 physics students aged 11-14 from BBC Bitesize.

Light waves encountering a prism disperse to produce a rainbow of colors. Particles of light, or photons, strike electronic pixels inside digital cameras to create an image.

Twenty-odd years before Newton stated the three laws of motion, he conducted a simple, breakthrough prism experiment. He poked a hole through his window shade, allowing a single beam of light to ...

More than 350 years ago, a young Isaac Newton fundamentally altered our understanding of visible light when he put a glass prism to a beam of sunlight and saw an array of colors he already knew to ...