4" Optical Glass Triangular Prism

We purchased this prism for our toddler grandson. He's a curious fellow, and the chance to experiment with light refraction is right up his alley. The prism is high quality. Well cut and polished. Sturdy too, even as our toddler "heavy hands" it. The prism produces clear, defined, and colorful spectra. What else could you want?

Seems good quality and will separate light into a rainbow when adjusted properly. It's a lot harder to achieve than those decorative teardrop style, where you just hang them and they throw rainbows when the sun hits them, but this style is better for showing how the light is bent.

Has a defect in it making the refraction from certain angles have a shadowy blob, other than that great tool.

I had no specific use for a prism other than sheer curiosity after finding the one I had 25-30 years ago as a kid. It was acrylic and a bit dulled up, like what happens to car headlights. This came in the mail promptly. It IS solid glass and is much more solid. I was using a small AA Maglite to try to get a spectrum Dark Side of the Moon style and what I got was... ok. The next day, I held it in the direct sunlight of a window and it gave off a deep, brilliant spectrum. The colors were enhanced beautifully from the red to the indigo and violet. I held it side by side with my old acrylic one and the glass prism definitely worked much nicer. I imagine that being glass, it would scratch or break easily, so it does come in a padded storage box with a soft liner. Glad I purchased it. Pretty cool conversation piece. Supposedly, a right angle prism works nicely too and I may jump on one too.

I use this for a toddler to entertain and learn colors. Price is good and a good deal of fun. I buy many toys on Amazon that, under adult supervision, help a toddler learn how objects work, and this is one of the items. Playing with real objects rather than just digital screens is worthwhile.

I bought this as a gift for my 8 year old grandson and he loves it! It came nicely packaged and he said it looked like a diamond. He likes playing with it in different lighting at different angles to see the "rainbow" inside. Obviously breakable so children need to be cautioned to handle it with care. I think it would be entertaining at any age from grade school and up.

The middle size crystal arrived chipped toward one end. Since there was no glass piece in the box, it was packaged that way. Even so, most prisms have a place to hold the prism. So I just hold the prism at that end. Not a problem. Just a reminder that optics crystals are very fragile. Not sturdy at all. A note about usage. Crystal prisms do not work very well with dim artificial lights (fluorescents, incandescent bulbs, LED). You need to put them in bright white light or direct sunlight to see the rainbow. Secondly you need to reflect it off of a white wall. Otherwise the prism is not very good. That is not the quality of the prism product just the nature of light transmitted through crystal. With these caveats, these prisms are suited for adult toys. They are not very useful for camera imaging or such. I use them to try to ad hoc repeat Newton's experiments on color mixing. Not an easy experiment to repeat. There is no way to obtain accurate metrics using these prisms so they are not experiment apparatus. Still, the price is right for hobby use such as mine. I did succeed with combination color mixing.

My grandson saw someone on TV using a prism and asked me if it was real of "fake news" (Ah the tragedy of where our "president" has taken our society's reality!) The prims arrived FAST! They are perfect made and do their job. He is so jazzed about it he nows goes around looking for sunbeams to work their magic. I highly recommend these prisms. The work better than the acrylic ones, they have no internal irregularities that will affect the light coming oout of them.

Casts a rainbow