Which term refers to the following definition: An optical property that's the difference between the RI values of violet and red wavelengths of visible light for a material?

Which term refers to the following definition: An optical property that's the difference between the RI values of violet and red wavelengths of visible light for a material?

• A. Dispersion
• B. Doubly refractive (anisotropic)
• C. Digging out
• D. Emplacement

Answer: (A)

Dispersion is the optical property that describes how a material's refractive index changes with wavelength. In the visible range, violet light usually has a higher refractive index than red light, so the difference between their indices measures how much the material disperses light. This variation is what causes prisms to spread white light into colors. The other terms don’t fit: doubly refractive (anisotropic) refers to birefringence in crystals, where light splits into two rays with different indices for different directions or polarizations, not the wavelength-dependent difference across colors. The remaining options are unrelated to this concept.

Dispersion is the optical property that describes how a material's refractive index changes with wavelength. In the visible range, violet light usually has a higher refractive index than red light, so the difference between their indices measures how much the material disperses light. This variation is what causes prisms to spread white light into colors. The other terms don’t fit: doubly refractive (anisotropic) refers to birefringence in crystals, where light splits into two rays with different indices for different directions or polarizations, not the wavelength-dependent difference across colors. The remaining options are unrelated to this concept.