Do individual photons of light each contain all the colors of the light spectrum or is each single photon a single color?
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I wonder if you are trying to think how prisms work. You put in one color of light (white) and get the entire rainbow back out.
As others pointed out, light only has a single color at any particular time. The color of light is determined by its wavelength. HOWEVER the color that we see is the combination of all the different wavelengths of light hitting our eyes.
So, when we see sunlight or a flashlight that looks white, that is not because every single photon is “white”, but rather the sum of all the different colors mixing is perceived as white.
When you use something like a prism, what you are doing is taking the “white” light that has all the colors mixed together and seperating and organizing those colors. So all the red photons go one way and all the blue photons go the opposite way.
None of the colors have changed, they just are organized.
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