• Question: What would you see if you shone white light through a rhombicosidodecohedron?

    Asked by Elinor to Laura, Matthew, Andrew, Rebecca on 19 Nov 2014.
    • Photo: Matthew Camilleri

      Matthew Camilleri answered on 19 Nov 2014:

      You will see the white light being divided into its visible colour spectrum, making the crystal really shiny.

    • Photo: Laura Schofield

      Laura Schofield answered on 19 Nov 2014:

      It depends what angle the light is compared to the faces of the rhombicosidodecahedron. If it is perpendicular, it may just shine straight through and come out on the opposite side. If you put it at an angle though you will get pretty spectacular refraction and internal reflection so it will look really shiny and display the different colours in the visible spectrum onto a white piece of paper if you put it on the other side of the crystal.

    • Photo: Andrew McKinley

      Andrew McKinley answered on 19 Nov 2014:

      Well, I guess the first thing to assume is that the polyhedron (quicker to type!) is transparent to the light!
      Laura has pretty much hit the nail on the head though – if you shine light on at an angle, then it will do a similar thing as for a prism, but it will be much more complicated! You will get light refracting, plus reflecting inside the shape. In fact, because the “path lengths” inside the shape (the total distance light travels while inside the material) will be lengthened by these complex reflections, the dispersion (separation between the colours) will be much greater, so you will find it easy to see all the different colours of the rainbow.

      These solids are the basis of how precious stones are cut, and the shapes of the cut are such to maximise this ‘path length’ inside the stone and to maximise their “sparkliness”.

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