High School Photo Winner's Showcase

School: Tamalpais High School

Teacher: David Lapp

This photo was contrived by holding a crystal vase upside down at the perfect angle in the sunlight to produce the illusion of a rainbow being poured out of the vase as liquid would. Of course the technical name for this rainbow is the phenomenon of white light dispersion. The sunlight flowing in through the window enters the crystal as purely white light, yet exits with the many colors of the spectrum, including red, yellow, and blue. This is because the white light that enters is really just a sum of all the colors of the spectrum, and each of these colors has a slightly different index of refraction. So when the crystal is placed at a certain angle, the colored light will bend in certain directions (depending on what their index of refraction is), emphasizing the separation of colors and creating this rainbow effect.