Page 24 - All About History - Issue 11-14

Science

03 White screen
A seven-colour spectrum
is reflected on the surface:

Red, orange, yellow, green,
blue, indigo and violet.
DEVELOPMENT

OF OPTICS

SHINING A NEW LIGHT ON

COLOUR, ENGLAND, 1672

05 Experiment
Newton isolated each of the colours
by making small holes on the
ankind has speculated about vision and screen for them to pass through.
light since antiquity with some of the
earliest theories being put forward by
Greek philosophers. Plato thought that
Mthe eye emitted particles that made ISAAC NEWTON
objects visible, Pythagoras speculated that objects English 1643–1727
projected light particles into the eye and Aristotle
Born to a prosperous
believed that particles moved through waves farmer, who died
from the objects to the eye. It was not until the Brief three months after
Bio
17th century and the work of the English scientist he was born, Newton
was brought up by
Isaac Newton that light was finally cast on its true his grandparents and attended
physical properties. Cambridge University in 1661.
While there he became heavily
From a young age, Newton had displayed
interested in – among other
an excellent academic mind and attended the things – mathematics, optics
University of Cambridge at 19 years old. While and physics. He is best known
for his work with optics and
studying he was influenced by the writings of light and for publishing his
Galileo and Copernicus, so he began developing theory on gravity. As befitting a
his own theories on mathematics and on the man of his stature, he is buried
in Westminster Abbey.
nature and properties of light. By 1666, he began
to study optics on his own and subsequently
develop theories around the composition of white
light and the spectrum of colours. By using a
prism he refracted white light which showed its How do we know this?
constituent colours of red, orange, yellow, green, There are a host of books about Newton, both
blue, indigo and violet. This showed that ‘pure’ the man and the scientist, that shed light on
light, white light, was anything but colourless. the optics experiment but – for those with a
As a result of his experiments the scientist scientific mind – his original source material
developed his theory of colour, which claimed that proves to be illuminating. Newton’s Opticks was
objects appear certain colours because they absorb first published in 1704 and is largely a record
of experiments and the deductions made from
and reflect different amounts of light. Newton was them. In this book he sets out his experiments
to maintain that colour was determined solely by and his theories on the nature of light. The text
Newton’s Opticks was
light, an opinion that created much controversy is considered one of the great works of science. translated to Latin in 1706
and disagreement during his lifetime.

24