NEWTON’S DISC
WHY DO WE SEE IN COLORS?
Newton’s Disc is a physics experiment consisting of a rotating disc divided into seven segments of red, orange, yellow, green, blue, indigo, and violet, which, when spun very quickly, appears almost white.
Isaac Newton (1642-1727) was an English physicist, mathematician, astronomer, and theologian recognized as one of the most important scientists of all time. Following a series of experiments and observations on how a prism decomposes sunlight into visible spectrum colors, he developed a theory of color. In 1704, he published the work Opticks, in which he demonstrated that white light is composed of seven visible colors and presented a diagram of colors in the form of a disc.
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Visible light is a small fraction of the electromagnetic spectrum that we can access thanks to photosensitive cells known as photoreceptors located in the retina of the eye. Colors are located at different wavelengths, allowing us to identify them separately. Everything we see is impacted by the electromagnetic radiation of light, absorbing part of the light waves and reflecting the rest. The ones that are ‘bounced back’ are the colors we see.