Why do flowers have different colors?

It is now generally accepted that light is composed of photons (which display some of the properties of a wave and some of the properties of a particle; see Wave-particle duality), and that all light travels at the same speed (the speed of light) in a vacuum. The speed of light within a material is lower than the speed of light in a vacuum, and the ratio of speeds is known as the refractive index of the material. In some materials, known as non-dispersive, the speed of different frequencies (corresponding to the different colors) does not vary, and so the refractive index is a constant. However, in other (dispersive) materials, the refractive index (and thus the speed) depends on frequency in accordance with a dispersion relation: glass is one such material, which enables glass prisms to create an optical spectrum from white light.