#What_Is_a_Continuous_Spectrum? When you shine white light through a prism, you find out that it contains a rainbow of colors. This is called dispersion, and it happens because light of different wavelengths, or colors, refracts, or bends, by different amounts inside the prism. The rainbow could be described as a spectrum, and if the spectrum goes all the way from red to violet, with no gaps, then it is a continuous spectrum. A beam of perfectly white light, like you would get under certain labo