![]() It turns out that light not only has a speed but that its speed is the fastest in the universe. This means that light waves should be no different, and if light is in motion, it must have a speed. The speed of lightĪll travelling waves can essentially be thought of as energy-carrying oscillations in motion. Red light has a wavelength of about 700 nanometres (700 x 10 9 metres), while violet light at the opposite end of the electromagnetic spectrum has a wavelength of about 380 nanometres. White light, once dispersed, gives us all the colours in the visible electromagnetic spectrum, which is what you would see in a rainbow. White light is dispersed through a prism into all the colours in the visible spectrum, Wikimedia Commons CC BY-SA 4.0 We know this because light exhibits a property called dispersion when passing through a glass prism, as shown in the figure below. White light, like light from the sun, consists of all the wavelengths of visible light together. The word transverse is simply a reference to the fact that electric and magnetic fields are oscillating (waving), hence the word electromagnetic. It carries energy from one point to another, just as all travelling waves do. We can be more precise now and say that the nature of light is that of a transverse wave. This means that every time you view a beautiful red rose on a sunny day, your eyes perceive a reflection of red light from the rose, which has a wavelength of about 650 nm. Light waves can have different wavelengths, which determine the colour of visible light that is observed. The wavelength is the distance between any two successive points on a wave that are in phase (e.g., two successive crests or two successive troughs).
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