Imagine if I have a red colored prism that splits white light ray into its seven components, would the red component be affected by the red color of the glass material of the prism in any which way? I imagine that the red color of the glass material is nothing but red light reflected towards our eyes, would this reflected(or refracted) light interfere with the red component of split light ray before reaching our eyes?
[Physics] Does the color of refractive medium affects the color of refracted light
opticsvisible-light
Related Solutions
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The amount of reflected light is predicted by Fresnel's equations. The equations are a little cumbersome, but they tell you that the fraction of light reflected depends on the index of refraction of the two materials, as well as the angle of incidence.
One thing though, is since the index of refraction changes with the wavelength of light, then the amount of reflected light also changes with the wavelength!
Realistically though, the index of refraction barely changes at all over the visible spectrum.
In this image, the orange band is the visible spectrum. Those materials labeled "crown" are different types of glass. The range of the index of refraction for these glasses is only about 0.02 or 0.03 over the visible spectrum.
In other words, the glass barely notices the different colours. It reflects all visible light almost identically.
White light is a mixture of all wavelengths in visible spectrum. The blue glass has a property to absorb all colors except blue.Hence only blue is transmitted and thus the light seems to be blue.Similarly that yellow light might not be pure ad must be containing some amount of red light,which gets transmitted singlehandedly.I hope this helps!
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Best Answer
No. The only effect that the red color would have would be to attenuate all the colors that are not red. With white light in, you'll still get a spectrum out, but the blues and greens will be dimmer than they would be with a clear prism.
(The positions of the colors might be shifted by a very small amount because absorption comes with a small change of refractive index.)