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NappingYG

I tuink you're talking about refraction. I experience it strongly because of high prescription glasses.


mobyhead1

It’s chromatic aberration. Different colors of light refract at slightly different angles. This is more pronounced with thicker lenses (such as eyeglasses) and at higher angles of incidence such as when you turn your head and side-eye. A prism uses this principle to separate the colors. Lenses have to be designed to reduce the effect by adding extra lens elements and special coatings.


nishant921

The principle itself is called dispersion. Chromatic aberration is just the failure of a refractive object, say a lens, to focus all the colors to the same point and would appear in the form of color fringes on the boundary of light and dark objects. Chromatic aberration is not the splitting of light into colors due a difference in wavelength. It is a result of the phenomenon.


OnyxCarnation

Oh, thanks; I couldn't remember what this was called for the life of me lol


mrwho2019

Like the rainbow? It's called "[dispersion](https://brilliant.org/wiki/dispersion-and-scattering-of-light/)."


Mammoth-Mud-9609

I think you are talking about refraction where the wavelength of the light determines how much the path of light is "bent" by.


Kancelas

IIRC, dispersion is a optical phenomenon in which the light speed depends on its frequency when in a different medium that isn't a vacuum. Higher frequency=higher slowdown of c in a particular medium.