The word dispersion has an etymological origin in Latin "dispersionis", which means the act of dividing, distributing or dispersing; in a general way then it can be described as the action of something that separates into several fragments because it has been divided. In the area of mathematics this term is used to evaluate the distribution of a population and sample, which are under study, this is called "measures of variability", by means of mathematical devices it can be described if the variables studied are found close to or far from the mean, the closer the more specific these variables will be, thus determining if all the cases studied have a developmental parameter or if they are totally different.
In the area of physics, the action of separation of the different waves that make up a white light is known as dispersion, these waves separate from each other according to the frequency range that each one has when it passes through a material, the different ranges they are specific to a characteristic color. According to the material and the thickness of the elements, these can be highly or not very dispersive, it should be noted that the dispersion effect will affect all the waves involved in radiation.
An example of dispersion is the "refractive dispersion" this is the result of the total separation of a white light that is a product of the association of lights in different colors, each colored light is represented by a specific wavelength and frequency; The way to observe this phenomenon is to make the light fall through a transparent material (eg: prism) that will allow us to observe the colors that make it up.
