Word: prisms
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Rainbow of Colors. To measure this tiny quantity-less than a millionth of the energy needed to split the nucleus of an atom-the scientists devised an ingenious technique. Light from a 200-watt mercury vapor lamp was focused on a diffraction grating, which, like a prism, broke up the beam into its constituent rainbow of colors, its separate wave lengths of light. By rotating the grating to a carefully calculated angle, the scientists were able to reflect light of a single, specific wave length at a target. Knowing the wave length, they were able to determine precisely the energy...
...optical astronomers turned to one of their most powerful tools: the spectrograph, which separates light into its component wave lengths by passing it through a prism or a series of fine lines etched on a glass plate. The spectrum of colors that results can be photographed and interpreted by scientists to reveal the secrets of the light's source...
...prints from the hands of tiny, squirming infants, Dr. Achs and her colleagues found that the policeman's inkpad and fingerprint technique would not do; instead they used a direct photographic method developed by New York's Philips Laboratories. The babies' palms were pressed against a prism so that the print was reflected and magnified, and could be photographed with a Polaroid camera...
...enigmatic, labored Toynbee, twisting time in the prism...
...oldest museums are among the best. The Science Museum of Philadelphia's Franklin Institute boasts 425 audience-participation devices ranging from a simple prism that refracts light rays to a 350-ton Baldwin locomotive that moves up and down a track. Boston's "science smorgasbord," as Director Henry Bradford Washburn calls it, includes a bucket pendulum that dribbles sand in harmonic patterns, a working cloud chamber, and a reproduction of a ship's bridge equipped with radar, sonar, gyroscopes, steering mechanism and a view of the Charles River...