What happens to colors when passed through a prism?

When light passes through a prism, it is refracted, which means that it bends as it enters and exits the prism due to the change in medium from air to glass and back to air. Different wavelengths of light are bent by different amounts. This phenomenon causes the spectrum of colors to spread out, separating the white light into its constituent colors.

As a result, the light you see after it passes through the prism showcases a spectrum ranging from red, orange, yellow, green, blue, to violet, effectively illustrating how light can be decomposed into its individual wavelengths. This separation occurs because each color corresponds to a specific wavelength, and their varying degrees of bending create the visible spectrum when the light emerges from the prism.