system
Given the following post, respond as if you're commenting on Reddit:
human
Does a prism break up all of the light spectrum, such as ultra violet and radio waves?

Or is visual light special in some way?
gpt
Yes in fact this is primarily how infrared light was discovered.  William Herschel was attempting to discover if the different colors of light would register different temperatures on a thermometer.  He set up a prism, and put a thermometer within each color of light to determine which was the warmest (turns out its red.)  His control thermometer was placed at the red end of the spectrum (but outside the actual red light.)  He expected that it would be cooler than the ones in the light (room temperature) but discovered that it was actually even warmer than the red, and inadvertently discovered infrared light.