White Light Spectrum Is A Mixture Of Distinct Colored Rays
Year(s) Officially Discovered: 1666
Discovery Put Into Action: It took over 100 more years
Team/Person Behind The Discovery: Issac Newton
People often miss the fact that a lot of major inventions and discoveries came out of the greatest discoveries ever by Issac Newton. He found that the white light spectrum is a mixture of distinct colored rays. We know that might seem like gibberish, but this is what it means. Using a prism, Newton was able to find that the red light deviated consistently less than the violet light, which is pretty big.
[Image via Omer Bugra/Shutterstock.com]It meant that when white light passes through something transparent (such as air), into another (such as glass), light components are deflected for the first time all based on color. The same occurs when they reemerge. That, in turn, makes colored light rays from red to violet. From this, Newton developed the White Light Spectrum, which consists of the colors red, orange, green, blue, & violet. In spite of his work, Newton did not know why it did this. Thomas Young would come into play 100 years later to give us the answer.
Team/Person Behind The Discovery: Michael Faraday & James Stoddart (only for the steel)
Michael Faraday is one of the world’s greatest inventors, yet he also discovered a lot of important things too. One of the first he along with James Stoddart found was massive. The two discovered that alloying iron with chromium will produce a form of stainless steel that is resistant to oxidizing elements (basically, rust). This was huge and became a staple for several knives and other cutlery that we use today both outdoors and indoors. That’s along with a wide variety of other things too.
[Image via Kathryn Boast – Twitter]Alone, Faraday found that the production of an electromotive force across an electric conductor will change the magnetic field. This became known as electromagnetic induction and helped to give rise to numerous machines that Faraday would later be credited with creating. Moreover, his work pioneered what we see in mechanics and engineering, as this helped us form motors. Basically, all travel we know today is thanks to Faraday’s work. Clearly, these are some of the greatest discoveries of all time.
