The same is true of all the in-between spectral colors that don't have common names.īecause the physical color spectrum is continuous, the naming of colors is purely a societal affair. It exists on its own as a fundamental color with its own frequency. You don't have to make this color by mixing red and orange. Red and orange are spectral colors, but so is the color half-way between red and orange. Rather, a pure spectrum has a smooth variation of colors. A pure spectrum does not have six solid bands of color. A pure spread of spectral colors can be produced by passing perfectly white light through a prism or a diffraction grating. For this reason, it is incorrect to refer to a pure spread of spectral colors as a "rainbow" even though they look similar. Although it is close to a pure spectrum, a rainbow in the sky really consists of mixed colors. Note that an atmospheric rainbow is not a spread of pure spectral colors. This fact becomes obvious when looking at the spectrum from a prism, which is simply a spread of spectral colors.
Even though the spectral colors are a subset of all colors, there are still an infinite amount of spectral colors. This means that simple lasers can only generate spectral colors (compound colors from laser systems can be made by mixing the light from several lasers, or by running the spectral color through a material that converts it to a mixture of colors). Simple lasers, by their very nature, only emit one frequency of light (to an excellent approximation). Non-spectral colors such as brown and pink are composed of a mixture of spectral colors. Spectral colors such as red or green are composed of light waves of a single frequency. A spectral color is composed of a single fundamental color on the visible part of the electromagnetic spectrum, as opposed to a mixture of colors. Spectral colors are also known loosely as rainbow colors. There are an infinite number of fundamental colors, if by "fundamental" you mean "spectral". Public Domain Image, source: Christopher S. Because the spectrum varies smoothly, there are an infinite number of fundamental colors. A prism splits white light into the fundamental spectral colors.
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