Belt Spun Newton's Colour Disc

This apparatus was inspired by the work of Sir Isaac Newton (1642-1727) in showing that white light is made from a range of colours called the spectrum. It consists of a circular disc of plastic with narrow wedges of colours in the hues of the rainbow. If spun at high speed, the colours on the disc will appear to merge into an off-white tinge demonstrating that white light may be composed from all the spectral colours by rotation of the multi coloured disk due to the persistence of human vision.
This apparatus was inspired by the work of Sir Issac Newton (1642 - 1727) in showing that white light is made form a range of colours called the spectrum. It consists of a circular disc of plastic with narrow edges of colour in the hues of the rainbow, plus white. The sequence of colours is repeated twice around the disk. If spun at high speed, the colours on the disk will appear to merge into an off-white tinge, due to the persistence of human vision. This 180mm diameter disk is mounted on a metal stand, and is driven by a belt with the help of the hand driven wheel.