Spectrum
Spectrum, arrangement or display of light or other form of radiation separated according to wavelength, frequency, energy, or some other property. Beams of charged particles can be separated into a spectrum according to mass in a mass spectrometer (see mass spectrograph ). Physicists often find it useful to separate a beam of particles into a spectrum according to their energy. Continuous and Line Spectra Dispersion, the separation of visible light into a spectrum, may be accomplished by means of a prism or a diffraction grating. Each different wavelength or frequency of visible light corresponds to a different color , so that the spectrum appears as a band of colors ranging from violet at the short-wavelength (high-frequency) end of the spectrum through indigo, blue, green, yellow, and orange, to red at the long-wavelength (low-frequency) end of the spectrum. In addition to visible light, other types of electromagnetic radiation may be spread into a spectrum according to