The Prism at Trinity College

In 1666, Isaac Newton darkened his room at Trinity College, Cambridge, and cut a small hole in the window shutter. A narrow beam of sunlight entered and struck a glass prism on his table. What emerged on the far wall astonished him — a brilliant ribbon of color stretching from deep violet to fiery red. Every hue the human eye can perceive had been hiding inside that single shaft of white light.…