Lenses and dispersion
Focusing and splitting light
- A magnifying glass makes tiny print big; a prism turns white light into a rainbow.
- Both use refraction — bending light in a careful, shaped way.
- Meet the lens and dispersion.
Converging and diverging lenses
- A converging lens is fat in the middle. It bends parallel rays inwards to meet at the principal focus.
- The distance from the lens to that focus is the focal length $f$.
- A diverging lens is thin in the middle and spreads rays out.
A converging lens makes parallel rays of light:
A converging (convex) lens bends parallel rays inward so they meet at the principal focus.
The distance from the lens to its principal focus is called the ____ length.
The focal length is the distance from the centre of the lens to the principal focus.
Images from a lens
- A converging lens can make a real image — the rays really meet, so it can be shown on a screen (as in a camera or the eye).
- When the object is very close, it makes a larger virtual image instead.
- Used close to the eye like this, the lens is a magnifying glass.
Used close to the eye as a magnifying glass, a converging lens makes a:
With the object very close, the lens forms an enlarged, upright virtual image — a magnifying glass.
Dispersion
- A glass prism splits white light into a band of colours — the spectrum. This splitting is dispersion.
- The order is red, orange, yellow, green, blue, indigo, violet.
- Red bends least: it has the longest wavelength and lowest frequency. Violet is the opposite.
- Light of a single colour (one frequency) is monochromatic.
Put these spectrum colours in order of wavelength, longest first.
Red has the longest wavelength and violet the shortest, so: red, yellow, green, blue, violet.
Which colour of visible light has the longest wavelength?
Red light has the longest wavelength and lowest frequency; violet has the shortest wavelength and highest frequency.
You've got it
- a converging lens brings parallel rays to the principal focus; lens-to-focus = focal length
- it makes a real image (on a screen) — or a magnified virtual image when the object is close (magnifying glass)
- a prism causes dispersion: white light → red…violet
- red = longest wavelength, lowest frequency; violet = shortest, highest