White light splits into its colours when passed through a prism. This phenomenon is called:

1. A prism refracts light by different amounts for different wavelengths. 2. The white light spreads into the colours of the rainbow. 3. This splitting of a single beam into its components is called dispersion. 4. Refraction is the change of direction; dispersion is the splitting itself. _Source: syllabus Science Ch 11 'Human Eye and the Colourful World'_