Thom spectrum

Okay, so let's imagine you have a bunch of crayons, like red, blue, yellow, green, and purple. Each crayon has a color on it, right?

Now, imagine instead of crayons you have some waves of light. These waves are different colors just like the crayons. But instead of red, blue, yellow, etc., they have different names like red, orange, yellow, green, blue, indigo, and violet. This is called the rainbow colors.

The thing is, sometimes you don't just have one of these waves of light. You might have a bunch of them all mixed together, kind of like mixing the colors on a painting. And just like with a painting, you need to know which colors are in there and how much of each color there is to get the right mix.

That's where something called a "spectrum" comes in. A spectrum is like a list or a graph that shows you all the different colors that are in your mixed-up wave of light.

The "Thom spectrum" is a specific way of organizing and showing this list of colors. It's named after a guy named René Thom who was really interested in studying patterns and shapes in nature.

So, think of the Thom spectrum like a really cool chart that tells you exactly how many different colors are in your mixed-up wave of light, and how much of each color there is. If you're a scientist or really interested in light and colors, looking at a Thom spectrum can tell you a lot of information about what you're studying.