Image talk:Light dispersion conceptual.gif

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

I think the "refracting dots" model is more intuitive, but there are some issues that I think should be considered. Your white dots entering the left side of the prism could be considered light "packets" and as such have a wavefront associated with them. They may or may not be coherent - which is unimportant - but they have a definite phase relationship associate with the wavefront, which is also approximately a plane wave. The chromatic dots leaving the prism have a curved wavefront which is exactly correct, and both the curvature and overall tilt of the wavefront are very instructive. What happens inside the prism is quite a bit more problematic. An inquisitive student would notice that the various wavefronts entering the prism are segregated and recombined into new wavefronts before exiting the prism, which is of cource incorrect. It is precisely that the wavefront itself is refracted according to wavelength or frequency in the material that is the take-home message for this sub-topic, and one that great pains should be taken to illustrate correctly. Wonderful graphical work, in any event. 65.202.227.91 (talk) 18:22, 6 March 2008 (UTC)mjd 2008-03-06 13:21EST