PRISM • DICTIONARY ONE.COM • Definition of Prism

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/prˈɪzəm/ Listen

Prism

noun

A polyhedron with two congruent and parallel faces (the bases) and whose lateral faces are parallelograms.

Optical device having a triangular shape and made of glass or quartz; used to deviate a beam or invert an image. Synonym: optical prism.

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"Prism" Quotes from Famous Books

... these are produced by a diffraction grating, invalidate Newton's idea that the optical apparatus serves to reveal colours which are inherent in the original light. Today it is known that these colours are an outcome of the interference of the apparatus (whether prism or grating) with the light. Thus we find Professor R. W. Wood, in the opening chapter of his Physical Optics, after having described the historical significance of Newton's conception of the relation between light and colour, saying: 'Curiously enough, this ...

— Man or Matter • Ernst Lehrs

... yet know all about our sunbeams. See, I have here a piece of glass with three sides, called a prism. If I put it in the sunlight which is streaming through the window, what happens? Look! on the table there is a line of beautiful colours. I can make it long or short, as I turn the prism, but the colours always remain arranged in the same way. Here at my left hand is ...

— The Fairy-Land of Science • Arabella B. Buckley

... Self-same radiance that is shed From the summer-heart of Poet, Flushing those that never know it. Tell me not the light thou viewest Is a false one; 'tis the truest; 'Tis the light revealing wonder, Filling all above and under; If in light you make a schism, 'Tis the deepest in the prism. ...

— A Hidden Life and Other Poems • George MacDonald

... guess I'm a pixie sort of girl. Please don't expect 'prunes and prism' from me, for you won't ...

— A harum-scarum schoolgirl • Angela Brazil

... happens upon viewing an object in various degrees of light. And what is more known than that the same bodies appear differently coloured by candle-light from what they do in the open day? Add to these the experiment of a prism which, separating the heterogeneous rays of light, alters the colour of any object, and will cause the whitest to appear of a deep blue or red to the naked eye. And now tell me whether you are still of opinion that every body hath its true real colour ...

— Three Dialogues between Hylas and Philonous in Opposition to Sceptics and Atheists • George Berkeley

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