Who remembers ROY-G-BIV?

This weekend I was in the middle of doing my 300 daily situps ( where's the sarcasm emoji? ) when I couldn't help but notice this amazing pattern on our ceiling. It turns out light from the window was hitting a crystal chandelier on the ceiling and the crystals were acting like a prism, refracting the light into it's component colors. As it was a little after 10:00 am, and as you can see the sun was already heavy blue / green but still a representative amount of red to balance the blue.

I didn't have my spectrometer on me, but I'm guessing the light was already close to 5600K, peak Kelvin temp. for direct sun, and just to be clear, this was reflected sun, not direct.

So back to the title question. Does anyone out there remember ROY-G-BIV from school?

The Answer: It's an acronym for the colors in the spectrum

R = Red

O = Orange

Y = Yellow

G = Green

B = Blue

I = Indigo

V = Violet

It may come as a surprise to many but "white" light is not the same as white paint ( or at least what I think white paint is, I'm a lighting guy not a coatings guy). As I understand, white paint is paint that doesn't really have any colors in it, aside from tiny drops of tinting, whereas "white" light is not white at all, it's actually a combination of ALL the colors of the spectrum and our eye perceives it as white.

If LEDs are a near lasers and emit extremely narrow bands of light, enough wavelengths to only produce a single color, then how do they make "white" light when "white" is actually many different colors combined ?

Have you ever wondered ? If you're normal, you probably haven't, but I have. Stay tuned, the answer will be forthcoming as we continue our discussion on another day.