July 8, 2010 • 26 mins
Butterflies' wings are colored as a result of iridescence; this fascinating optical phenomenon is the result of light refracting off transparent surfaces. Josh and Chuck reveal how pigmentation, iridescence, light and butterfly wings work in this episode.
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Speaker 1 (00:00):
Brought to you by the reinvented two thousand twelve Camray.
It's ready. Are you welcome to stuff you should know
from house Stuff Works dot com? Hey, and welcome to
the podcast. I'm Josh Clark with me as always as
Charles W. Chucker's fluttered by Bryant. No, I'm a caterpillar
(00:25):
and one day I might be a beautiful butterfly. Yes,
you're you're an Olympic coal. Yes, but you're going to
be a diamond someday, Chuck. Who's saying that? Uh? Originally
it was one of those old guys. That's a good one.
Widespread panic. Did they cover that really? Yeah? It was
(00:47):
like a nineteen minute version. Yeah, right, it went a
little long. You could say, how you doing, Chuck? I'm good.
I have freshly shaved my head like you. No, mind's
not fresh minds shaggy. Well yeah, but we're both kind
of onion heads. Now, you look good where I'm usually not.
You look pretty. Thank you? Did you take a series
of pictures of yourself? No? Not yet? Okay, that's later. So, Chuck,
(01:11):
you've heard about this oil spill, right? Yeah? I had
a feeling you might tie this in devastation, uh, dead wildlife, UM,
injured economies, Obama's Katrina. Yeah, there's one thing that has
been conspicuously absent in my um estimation. Beautiful. Nobody's talking
(01:35):
about iridescence. No one's talking about how pretty the oil
slick is. It's because it's horribly ugly. It is, unless
you stay in at a certain angle and then you're like, oh,
this is kind of nice. Actually, yeah, I know what
you mean. Yeah, we're headed. We're talking about iridescence in
this one because the shimmery color changing quality called iridescence
(01:59):
that oils bills feature are in common with something called butterflies,
the wings of butterflies. And I can tell you that, Um,
twenty four hours ago, I had no idea why a butterfly,
the butterfly's wings were iridescent. Now I do. This is
(02:20):
why I love episodes like this, because it's here, is
why there's no maybe it's kind of like this, or
we don't really know, so you and I get the
conjecture like jackasses all day long? Right, Um, Instead, it's
science has figured out why this happens, and you and
I are going to explain it to people. So Chuck,
(02:40):
let's do that right. Now, let's talk about why a
butterfly's wings are iridescent. Well, there's a couple of reasons
they have their their striking color. Iridescence is the main one.
But we probably need to go ahead and get pigment
and just ordinary color out of the way. Let's pigment, Josh,
is uh coloring matter do you find in like cells
(03:01):
and tissues? And the deal with pigment is it is
the same from every angle. You can get up under it,
you can get on top of it and sneak it
behind it, you can get all up on that, that
all up in it, but it always looks the same. Right.
That's just called that's what they call it ordinary color.
And the reason why is any given pigment um will
absorb all colors except one, say, right, like chlorophyll. Sure,
(03:24):
chlorophyll absorbs all colors except green, which it reflects, which
causes something to look green like a plant a plant,
sure is one. Melanine tends to absorb everything but yellow,
giving things a brownish color. Right. Well, yeah, and that's
albine is um. That means you have no melanin, right,
You're lacking a pigment. Same with paints, right. These are
(03:46):
all just pigments. These things don't inherently have a color.
They just absorb certain colors and reflect others back. Yeah,
it's pretty standard stuff. Did you know redheads um have
they think they have an additional um iron based pigment
their color. Interesting, they're freak issue poor ginger kids. Man,
they are really taking I love redhead stuf, do you well?
(04:09):
I mean, okay, yeah, Actually I just like the red,
like really red headed people is kind of cool looking
to me. I'll just go and go on record with that,
like red or orange, because there's a big difference. Man,
I'm not talking strawberry blond. I'm talking like really really redheads,
shocking red, shocking ginger redheads. You like staring at them?
I do? Okay, Um, don't stare too hard, okay. Freaks
(04:32):
people blind? Alright. So that's that's pigments. They're pretty standard.
One can argue boring stuff, right. Pigments don't give anything
iridescence now, they just reflect light. And you know that's
that iridescence is uh this kind of super spectacular um
(04:52):
reflection of color, almost shimmery. Yes, that changes, Actually the
color changes if you move, so your descence is generally
relegated to the observer. Depending on where you're standing, that
will change the color, how spectacular color is and um
again we know why, especially when it comes to butterfly
(05:14):
wings right, or you know we should mention just a
couple of others before we move on, like the Japanese
beetle that green on the wings, Yes, your descent, mother
of pearl, seashells, some fish scales and like bubbles, peacock feathers. Pa,
Well that's a huge one. Did I tell you that
there's a peacock in our neighborhood. No. I was walking
(05:34):
with Emily the other day walking the dogs the other
morning and we looked up. We heard this weird sound.
It sounds like hell yeah. I thought someone was crying
for help. And I looked up and literally at the
apex of this roof of this house was a full
on peacock standing there weird loose or did they keep
(05:55):
it in the backyard keep peak? Yeah, the guy has
two peacocks because the neighbor. The neighbor was out and
I was looking at Yeah, he's got peacocks. I was like,
that's staring at it like it was a full on redhead.
I was, and I said that's sort of weird, and
he went yeah and loud yeah, but so hell yeah yeah.
But it was iridescent and it was fascinating. They are
they're gorgeous and actually peacock feathers led to um the
(06:19):
investigation of iridescence and Newton. Eventually Thomas Boyle was the
one who went catching that's the way it happens. So
we were talking about Robert Boyle. Sorry, Robert Boyle, thanks,
one of the Boil brothers exactly. Um. We were talking
about how pigments reflect just one color, right, Transparent objects
(06:42):
have the ability to reflect all colors, right, um. With
an oil slick with a bubble, you have two surfaces,
right you have we'll talk about a bubble. We'll talk
about the oil slick. The oil slick is oil floating
on water, right, yes, um, you have. So you have
the the top film of the oil slick. Lights passing
(07:04):
through all the sums bouncing back, which you will see
right with your um, and some can make it to
the water beneath the stuff that passes through the top
film and then can be reflected back and can be
reflected back right now, if the light that's reflected from
the top is also reflected from the bottom if they're
(07:25):
in sync, if the phases match up, right, and it
phases the position of the trough and the crest. Because
remember light exists on a wavelength, right, so picture it
is like a regular wave or like a roller coaster
if you're a little more simple, and like you said,
if they match up as if they were on top
of each other, then you're gonna get your deskce right.
(07:46):
So Chuck, follow me on this one to the ends
of the Earth. Alright, So go beep boop beep. Okay.
So the beep that's a crest, and then the boop
that's a trough off trough. Okay, so start going beep
boop beepoop. So and this is this is Chuck being
(08:07):
a wave of light, a wavelength of light, right um reflecting.
He's just reflected the moment he starts. He's reflected off
the surface of a transparent object. Bee booepoo. Right. Okay.
So now I'm like coming in and I'm going to
come in and start after I've just reflected off the
(08:28):
bottom surface of say an oil slick, right, all right,
So you want me to do this again, So Chuck
has already reflected off the top surface. I made it
through the bottom surface, and now I'm reflecting awful. Okay,
so boo boo. Now let's say I come in and
like halftime beepoo beep beep. It's all screwed up. That
(08:49):
sounds awful. It does sound awful, and in when you're
speaking of light, it sounds like this, right, nothing, they
cancel each other out. But if I can't, if if
my phase is equal to yours, but say a full
measure behind, it sounds like this, go ahead, bee boop
(09:10):
bee boo bee boop beep boopy. Right, So it sounded nice.
It sounded louder. It didn't sound nice, but it sounded louder.
It wasn't all discordant, right, So what just happened was
we amplified the beat boop right, right, yeah, yeah, exactly.
This is called um what is it? Constructive interference? That's right,
(09:31):
and that's I don't want to say good and bad,
because it's really scientists would say it is neither good
nor bad. But I'm gonna say that's the good kind
because that's what gives you iridescence. The bad kind would
be destructive interference, and that, like you said, that cancels
each other out, making something like less not less iridescent,
not iridescent at all. Right, So that's it close, that's
(09:53):
not entirely it, right because consider this chuck light. Light
as we see it exists on a spectrum. Right. So, Um,
on one hand, you have about a wavelength of four
nimes violet light. On the other end of the spectrum
that we can see is red light, which is has
(10:13):
a wavelength about seven nimes. Right, okay, Um, if you
go a little beyond the violet, you get bluer than
blue a k A ultra violet, which we all love. Right.
If you go beyond the red, uh, you have redder
than red or infrared. Right. We can't see either of those,
but we can't see within that spectrum for violet to red.
(10:34):
And it's based on wavelength, if we um, if you
take white light right like sunlight, and you put it,
if you projected onto a transparent object, all of the colors.
Remember the Pink Floyd Dark Side of the Moon album cover.
Of course, it's white light going into a prism and
then coming out in its separate forms, in all its
(10:56):
psychedelic glory. Right now, imagine that that's static, Like it's
it's not changing position. If you are shooting a beam
of white light onto a bubble, depending on where you stand,
the angle of reflection, right of refraction, I'm sorry, Um,
depends on what color you're going to see. So if
(11:17):
you move across your angle, you're going to see a
different color. And hence this explains the color changing of iridescence. Right. So, like,
you know, have you ever seen the big bubble wines
where they can both the really huge bubbles the huge bubbles. Uh,
if you ever do that, do a little experiment and
look at it from different angles, jump around, walk around,
(11:39):
and you're gonna see some color change. Have you ever
seen a bubble pop in SloMo? That Super SloMo? No,
but isn't wasn't that an episode of that one show
Time Work? Yeah? Yeah, the Discovery Show. It is super cool, dude.
If you look at it in slow motion, you like
would pop the bubble, and you know, when you see
it in regular motion, it looks like it just pops
in a big burst, But from where you touch it
(12:00):
spreads and an arc all around the whole thing, and
you see it slowly popping as it goes around. It's
just really cool. Nice. It's neither here nor there though,
but it's still pretty like you're a descence. Right. So
what we have now is um if if that if
light from white light uh hits a transparent object, and
(12:24):
it's a multilayered transparent objects, say like oil on type
of water, or one side of a bubble and the
bottom side of the bubble, some light's gonna reflect off,
some's gonna make it through the bottom. Some of that
will reflect off, most will will go through. But if
the light from the bottom and the top are in
phase with one another, in an even phase, right, separated
(12:46):
by one two, three four five wave links rather than
you know, one point three five wavelengths, they'll be in
phase and they'll amplify each other. If it's white light,
then we're going to see, depending on our ang goal
all the colors of the rainbow. You're in this iridescent state, right. Okay,
(13:06):
So what does this have to do with butterfly wings?
I'll tell you, buddy. Okay. Butterfly wings are transparent, and
the deal is why they look so striking compared to
let's say, a bubble, which is pretty but not as
striking as a butterfly. It's because there are many, many
more layers stacked on top of each other that the
light has to go through. When all those are in phase,
(13:28):
you get like super iridescence. Right. So with a with
a bubble, you have two chances right at the top
and the bottom two lousy chances. Right. With a butterfly wing,
the the cuticle of the scale of a butterfly wing, say,
has maybe a dozen So every every beam of light,
every wavelength of light has you know, a dozen chances
to reflect back, say half of those are in phase. Yeah,
(13:54):
and also depending on how because the surfaces. Um, if
you look at a butterfly cuticle, it looks kind of
like a Christmas tree, right, so there's like a it
looks like a Christmas tree, basically like a lego Christmas tree.
Will say, but the scales, actually I'm out the scales. Yeah, yeah,
(14:16):
the scale cuticles that make up the scales. Yeah, that's kitan.
That's the same thing we have in like our hair,
it's protein in our fingernails. Nice okay, sorry, Um, So
as it goes down the tree, you know, they get wider,
These surfaces get wider, and each one can can bounce
light back off, but they're spaced evenly. So let's say
(14:39):
that the space in between is two d nanimeters and
blue light is four hundred nanometers in wavelength. Since the
two hundred is half of four hundred, it's going to
give blue light a better chance to reflect back in phase,
which is why I stay on like the blue morphoe butterfly,
(15:01):
which has a space of two between the scales. The
space and the scales appears so blue because blue has
a likelier chance of reflecting back in phase and being
amplifying in this iridescent manner, and the morpho doesn't that
actually venture into ultra the ultra violet spectrum? Yeah, remember
(15:22):
the angle. Yeah, so if you're looking, let's say, at
the right is red and at the left is violet.
If you move too far to the left, everything's gone
because you've moved out of the visible spectrum of light.
And now what you're seeing is the brown pigment, but
who can see it is the butterfly. Yeah, the monarchs
are actually in their migration, their huge migration every year.
(15:43):
They use ultra violet markings. Uh, ultra violet um light
for guide posts basically, right, Yes, they do, and uh
it Also the other effect or the other reason, um
that you have this iridescence and on the scales is
it soaks up heat because butterflies are cold blooded, so
they rely on like the sun to be able to function.
(16:07):
So the fact that they're soaking up this heat from
the sun allows them to fly, right, which is pretty cool.
And we also remember pigment, don't forget still plays a
role in this too, right, So if you have if
you have a butterfly scale that's um constructed, contains chlorophyll,
so you have um a green pigment. Yes, let's go
with blue. Okay, Now let's go with yellow. Okay, say
(16:30):
say it's a butterfly scale. It's constructive melanin. So you
have yellow already, which it's reflecting back yellow and monochromatic
blue light. It's going to it's going to appear to
us as green because color mixing still has has an effect, right,
So pigment structural color green. Can we talk about the
(16:52):
wings for a second too, because I know people are
going to write in and say that's really cool, but
is it true that butterflies will die if you touch
their wings? Sort of not completely? You can touch a
butterfly wing. Like, if you've ever touched a butterfly wing,
you'll notice you have like powder on your hands. Yeah,
those are the scales. Those are the scales. They are
that fine that they kind of disintegrate into powder. And
in theory, you can touch a butterfly wing without killing them,
(17:15):
but if you break it. They have little veins. They're
all connected by little veins, So essentially, if you disconnect
the veins from the fore wing and the hind wing,
that's when the butterfly is gonna die. And they're so
tender that it's really easy to happen. So in effect,
you probably will kill a butterfly if you mess with
their wings, but if you just happen to graze against it,
(17:36):
maybe not. No need to squish it after just such
a slight intrusion, right, Yeah, And moss, I think get
a bum wrap because they're not as pretty. Yeah, because
they're mainly mel what what was it, melitan, melanin melanin
mainly like brown and yellow, black and white. And they
also have a frenulum, which is a spine, and butterflies
(17:59):
don't have that. Right. Also, moths tend to be fatter
and fly at dusk or at night. Well, yeah, and
that's why butterflies get all the credit, because you're out
on a nice spring day in the garden and butterflies
were everywhere, and then at night you're hanging out by
the porch and you're freaked out by the moths everywhere,
like going towards the light. Well not only that, um,
there's there. The structure of a moth's wing is very,
(18:21):
very similar to the structure of butterflies transparent filmy scales.
For some reason, I guess it's because they do fly
at night. They are not iridescent. They don't appear iridescent,
although they would in sunlight. But they're part of the
same family scientifically, big happy family. Yeah, what was the family? Uh, Lepidoptera?
(18:43):
Was that lepidoptera? Lipidoptera. There's like a hundred and fifty
thousand varieties within that family and lepidoptera I means scaled
wings boom. Yeah, it's a great place to finish, don't
you think? Sure? You got to we recap Oh, I
don't think so. The party we explained it, well, I
think so, all right, because I feel more confused than
(19:04):
I did before. Well, you brought sound into it, but
I thought that was a very clever way to go
about it. Well, thanks a lot. If you want to
learn more about butterfly wings and they're striking colors, type
in butterflies striking colors in the handy search bar, how
stuff works dot Com brings up a pretty cool article
by Jennifer Horton. Hey, Chuck, chucks me from the future.
(19:25):
The future are idiot. Past seals have no idea whe're
doing this right now, right, but we do because we're
from the future, indeed, and you know what we're here
to do, don't you. We're interrupting our podcast for a reason.
T Shirt Winners announced. This is one of the if
you were a winner that you were guaranteed I mentioned
on the show, and this fulfills that application. Yes, this
(19:47):
is um. We've got the lawyers behind us that their
briefcases in bullwhips, right, yes, and uh, Chuck, we picked five.
I'm glad we picked five because we had like more
than seventy jries, right. I wanted to pick ten. I
wanted to pick twenty three. Um, and we actually did
have like a top twenty three at one point and
finally whittled it down time and time again, and we
(20:08):
came up with the five winners and they're announced on
the blog. There's an image gallery on how Stuff Works.
You can go onto our blogs at how stuff works
dot com and look for the blog post entitled we
Got your T shirt. We got your stuff you should
Know T shirt contest winners right here, uh, and that'll
take you into the site to check them out. You
(20:29):
can also get the shirts on the Discovery channel store
right yeah, there for sale. Yeah. You just go onto
the I Think store dot Discovery dot com and do
a search for stuff you Should Know and it brings
up all five of these magnificent T shirts. Right. So,
the names of the winning designers, the five brilliant individual
human beings who created these amazing designs, right, Their names
(20:53):
are what chuck Well first, these are in no particular order.
By the way, Um, we have Peter Feek or fight
Or We've been debating endlessly and he did a really
cool design of this old school microphone and it's sort
of logo looking. It makes us look like we're really pros. Yeah,
I call it hot Mike Hot Mike, Yeah, I like it. Uh.
And then of course there's Suki Anderson. Yeah, out of Kentucky,
(21:17):
I believe, I think, and she made what I think
is the coolest picture I've ever seen in my life. Yeah,
it's the baby with the fly on its forehead. Yes,
and don't worry. Yeah. I said on the blog that
it's it's unsettling and comforting at the same time, and
it's very hard to achieve. Agreed. So that was one
of our favorite ones. And then we went with Brad
(21:38):
Wilson's brain design, which is awesome. Yeah, we got a
lot of brain designs, so you guys were thinking along
the same lines, which means you're all smart and cool.
And that was the brain as as a representation of
our show is really, I think, pretty cool, and this
was what we thought looked best on a T shirt.
Brad nailed it. Yeah, he nailed it definitely. Uh. Matt
(21:58):
Stevenson came up with what I've dubbed the wood cut
parade right right, Our fans are gonna love this one. Yeah.
It's a it's a series of medieval characters I would say, skeleton, bishop,
a monk, a jester, um and they are carrying banners
let's say s y s K. They're leading the parade.
(22:20):
The stuff you should know parade from medieval times. Yeah,
and I said on the site it looks like a
paraded one to hide behind a tree and watch. It's awesome.
It's very cool. And then lastly, Chuck, I'm going to
leave this one to you because I can't pronounce this
guy's last name. Yes, we have Scott y A C
y s h Y, and I'm gonna say, yeah, yeah,
(22:40):
yakin ya kishin, Scott, whatever your last name, let's try
that one to Scott Yukishan if that is you. You
are one heck of a designer, my friend. And you
did the very cool caricature of Josh and I and
from our mouths and balloons. You have different caricatures of
different episodes and so much camaraderie between us. You know,
(23:02):
we just look like we are having a heck of
a time gaining the podcast as a sixties illustration. It's
very cool. One of my favorite ones to super awesome.
So Scott, Matt, Brad, Suky, Peter, thank you very much
to all of you guys, uh and thank you to
everybody who sent in. From something created in rich text
format to something that was obviously made by a professional
(23:24):
graphic designer, we appreciate all of you, guys, and thank
you very much for taking the time to lend us
your brains and creativity. That's awesome that we were blown away.
It was very cool. You're all very talented. Okay, and
now let's go back to our stupid um selves from
the past. I predict that it's going I'm gonna say
some assin I thing about the handy search bar. Watched.
(23:47):
Uh that means since I said handy searchbar, Chuck, are
you ready for this? Listener mail, Josh, I'm just gonna
call this, uh stuff you should know educating prisoner of America.
I like this one. This is a good one. Well,
prisoners of Virginia. At least, right which is in America?
Isn't it still it's a commonwealth. I don't know if
(24:08):
it counts. Oh, that's right, weirdos. All right, This from
Maria in Amelia, Virginia. I guess you have a prison there. Hi, guys,
I thought you might be interested to know that I
use your podcasts as a resource to teach writing to
inmate students. I'm a G. E. D. Teacher at a
men's president in Virginia. Writing is one of the weakest
skills for my students, and many of them never learned
(24:29):
to write as far as secondary school. Uh, and they
were afraid to write as adults, so they're sort of
illiterate or completely illiterate in some cases. Well, I mean,
think about it, Chuck, WoT is writing if not a
series of choices of what you're going to share with people,
it can be very intimidating. I burned your podcast to
a c D and replay one in class because we
(24:51):
don't have internet for obvious reasons. The men listen to
your podcast, they take notes, and then they must write
an article based on what we said. They practice writing
sentence is and paragraphs in this way. The subject matter
is of interest to them, some more than others. I'm
afraid to play the moonshine one as much as I
would like to. I know they would be interested even
if I skipped the parts where you make the still
(25:12):
and give the general recipe. So she won't do that,
because you know they'll build a moonshine still. I'll bet
they already know how the menhorns. Yeah, I think so. Uh.
Some of these guys have been down a long long time,
so they appreciate something to think about that isn't about
sentencing and parole hearings. Thank you for your material. My
family and I enjoy the podcast and they do a
real service to people. So we are actually educating prisoners
(25:37):
of a mayor. I know. That's awesome. So if you
guys are in prison right now, if you're in the
in the pokey in the who scale and you're listening now,
we just want to say good luck. You can turn
your life around, do your hard time, come out a
better person, don't do crimes again, and get your g
E D. And you know, get a get a job,
and and good luck to you. That's what I say.
(26:00):
And remember when you make a decision writing, don't look back.
Really such your advice. Yeah, that is my advice. Actually,
all right, you can always write something else. That's a
good point. Yeah, if you want to let us know
how we are changing the world for the better with
this podcast, and it's an email to stuff podcast at
how stuff works dot com for more on this and
(26:26):
thousands of other topics, does it how stuff works dot com.
Want more how stuff works, check out our blogs on
the house stuff works dot com home page. Brought to
you by the Reinvented two thousand twelve camera. It's ready.
Are you
Brought to you by the reinvented two thousand twelve Camray.
It's ready. Are you welcome to stuff you should know
from house Stuff Works dot com? Hey, and welcome to
the podcast. I'm Josh Clark with me as always as
Charles W. Chucker's fluttered by Bryant. No, I'm a caterpillar
(00:25):
and one day I might be a beautiful butterfly. Yes,
you're you're an Olympic coal. Yes, but you're going to
be a diamond someday, Chuck. Who's saying that? Uh? Originally
it was one of those old guys. That's a good one.
Widespread panic. Did they cover that really? Yeah? It was
(00:47):
like a nineteen minute version. Yeah, right, it went a
little long. You could say, how you doing, Chuck? I'm good.
I have freshly shaved my head like you. No, mind's
not fresh minds shaggy. Well yeah, but we're both kind
of onion heads. Now, you look good where I'm usually not.
You look pretty. Thank you? Did you take a series
of pictures of yourself? No? Not yet? Okay, that's later. So, Chuck,
(01:11):
you've heard about this oil spill, right? Yeah? I had
a feeling you might tie this in devastation, uh, dead wildlife, UM,
injured economies, Obama's Katrina. Yeah, there's one thing that has
been conspicuously absent in my um estimation. Beautiful. Nobody's talking
(01:35):
about iridescence. No one's talking about how pretty the oil
slick is. It's because it's horribly ugly. It is, unless
you stay in at a certain angle and then you're like, oh,
this is kind of nice. Actually, yeah, I know what
you mean. Yeah, we're headed. We're talking about iridescence in
this one because the shimmery color changing quality called iridescence
(01:59):
that oils bills feature are in common with something called butterflies,
the wings of butterflies. And I can tell you that, Um,
twenty four hours ago, I had no idea why a butterfly,
the butterfly's wings were iridescent. Now I do. This is
(02:20):
why I love episodes like this, because it's here, is
why there's no maybe it's kind of like this, or
we don't really know, so you and I get the
conjecture like jackasses all day long? Right, Um, Instead, it's
science has figured out why this happens, and you and
I are going to explain it to people. So Chuck,
(02:40):
let's do that right. Now, let's talk about why a
butterfly's wings are iridescent. Well, there's a couple of reasons
they have their their striking color. Iridescence is the main one.
But we probably need to go ahead and get pigment
and just ordinary color out of the way. Let's pigment, Josh,
is uh coloring matter do you find in like cells
(03:01):
and tissues? And the deal with pigment is it is
the same from every angle. You can get up under it,
you can get on top of it and sneak it
behind it, you can get all up on that, that
all up in it, but it always looks the same. Right.
That's just called that's what they call it ordinary color.
And the reason why is any given pigment um will
absorb all colors except one, say, right, like chlorophyll. Sure,
(03:24):
chlorophyll absorbs all colors except green, which it reflects, which
causes something to look green like a plant a plant,
sure is one. Melanine tends to absorb everything but yellow,
giving things a brownish color. Right. Well, yeah, and that's
albine is um. That means you have no melanin, right,
You're lacking a pigment. Same with paints, right. These are
(03:46):
all just pigments. These things don't inherently have a color.
They just absorb certain colors and reflect others back. Yeah,
it's pretty standard stuff. Did you know redheads um have
they think they have an additional um iron based pigment
their color. Interesting, they're freak issue poor ginger kids. Man,
they are really taking I love redhead stuf, do you well?
(04:09):
I mean, okay, yeah, Actually I just like the red,
like really red headed people is kind of cool looking
to me. I'll just go and go on record with that,
like red or orange, because there's a big difference. Man,
I'm not talking strawberry blond. I'm talking like really really redheads,
shocking red, shocking ginger redheads. You like staring at them?
I do? Okay, Um, don't stare too hard, okay. Freaks
(04:32):
people blind? Alright. So that's that's pigments. They're pretty standard.
One can argue boring stuff, right. Pigments don't give anything
iridescence now, they just reflect light. And you know that's
that iridescence is uh this kind of super spectacular um
(04:52):
reflection of color, almost shimmery. Yes, that changes, Actually the
color changes if you move, so your descence is generally
relegated to the observer. Depending on where you're standing, that
will change the color, how spectacular color is and um
again we know why, especially when it comes to butterfly
(05:14):
wings right, or you know we should mention just a
couple of others before we move on, like the Japanese
beetle that green on the wings, Yes, your descent, mother
of pearl, seashells, some fish scales and like bubbles, peacock feathers. Pa,
Well that's a huge one. Did I tell you that
there's a peacock in our neighborhood. No. I was walking
(05:34):
with Emily the other day walking the dogs the other
morning and we looked up. We heard this weird sound.
It sounds like hell yeah. I thought someone was crying
for help. And I looked up and literally at the
apex of this roof of this house was a full
on peacock standing there weird loose or did they keep
(05:55):
it in the backyard keep peak? Yeah, the guy has
two peacocks because the neighbor. The neighbor was out and
I was looking at Yeah, he's got peacocks. I was like,
that's staring at it like it was a full on redhead.
I was, and I said that's sort of weird, and
he went yeah and loud yeah, but so hell yeah yeah.
But it was iridescent and it was fascinating. They are
they're gorgeous and actually peacock feathers led to um the
(06:19):
investigation of iridescence and Newton. Eventually Thomas Boyle was the
one who went catching that's the way it happens. So
we were talking about Robert Boyle. Sorry, Robert Boyle, thanks,
one of the Boil brothers exactly. Um. We were talking
about how pigments reflect just one color, right, Transparent objects
(06:42):
have the ability to reflect all colors, right, um. With
an oil slick with a bubble, you have two surfaces,
right you have we'll talk about a bubble. We'll talk
about the oil slick. The oil slick is oil floating
on water, right, yes, um, you have. So you have
the the top film of the oil slick. Lights passing
(07:04):
through all the sums bouncing back, which you will see
right with your um, and some can make it to
the water beneath the stuff that passes through the top
film and then can be reflected back and can be
reflected back right now, if the light that's reflected from
the top is also reflected from the bottom if they're
(07:25):
in sync, if the phases match up, right, and it
phases the position of the trough and the crest. Because
remember light exists on a wavelength, right, so picture it
is like a regular wave or like a roller coaster
if you're a little more simple, and like you said,
if they match up as if they were on top
of each other, then you're gonna get your deskce right.
(07:46):
So Chuck, follow me on this one to the ends
of the Earth. Alright, So go beep boop beep. Okay.
So the beep that's a crest, and then the boop
that's a trough off trough. Okay, so start going beep
boop beepoop. So and this is this is Chuck being
(08:07):
a wave of light, a wavelength of light, right um reflecting.
He's just reflected the moment he starts. He's reflected off
the surface of a transparent object. Bee booepoo. Right. Okay.
So now I'm like coming in and I'm going to
come in and start after I've just reflected off the
(08:28):
bottom surface of say an oil slick, right, all right,
So you want me to do this again, So Chuck
has already reflected off the top surface. I made it
through the bottom surface, and now I'm reflecting awful. Okay,
so boo boo. Now let's say I come in and
like halftime beepoo beep beep. It's all screwed up. That
(08:49):
sounds awful. It does sound awful, and in when you're
speaking of light, it sounds like this, right, nothing, they
cancel each other out. But if I can't, if if
my phase is equal to yours, but say a full
measure behind, it sounds like this, go ahead, bee boop
(09:10):
bee boo bee boop beep boopy. Right, So it sounded nice.
It sounded louder. It didn't sound nice, but it sounded louder.
It wasn't all discordant, right, So what just happened was
we amplified the beat boop right, right, yeah, yeah, exactly.
This is called um what is it? Constructive interference? That's right,
(09:31):
and that's I don't want to say good and bad,
because it's really scientists would say it is neither good
nor bad. But I'm gonna say that's the good kind
because that's what gives you iridescence. The bad kind would
be destructive interference, and that, like you said, that cancels
each other out, making something like less not less iridescent,
not iridescent at all. Right, So that's it close, that's
(09:53):
not entirely it, right because consider this chuck light. Light
as we see it exists on a spectrum. Right. So, Um,
on one hand, you have about a wavelength of four
nimes violet light. On the other end of the spectrum
that we can see is red light, which is has
(10:13):
a wavelength about seven nimes. Right, okay, Um, if you
go a little beyond the violet, you get bluer than
blue a k A ultra violet, which we all love. Right.
If you go beyond the red, uh, you have redder
than red or infrared. Right. We can't see either of those,
but we can't see within that spectrum for violet to red.
(10:34):
And it's based on wavelength, if we um, if you
take white light right like sunlight, and you put it,
if you projected onto a transparent object, all of the colors.
Remember the Pink Floyd Dark Side of the Moon album cover.
Of course, it's white light going into a prism and
then coming out in its separate forms, in all its
(10:56):
psychedelic glory. Right now, imagine that that's static, Like it's
it's not changing position. If you are shooting a beam
of white light onto a bubble, depending on where you stand,
the angle of reflection, right of refraction, I'm sorry, Um,
depends on what color you're going to see. So if
(11:17):
you move across your angle, you're going to see a
different color. And hence this explains the color changing of iridescence. Right. So, like,
you know, have you ever seen the big bubble wines
where they can both the really huge bubbles the huge bubbles. Uh,
if you ever do that, do a little experiment and
look at it from different angles, jump around, walk around,
(11:39):
and you're gonna see some color change. Have you ever
seen a bubble pop in SloMo? That Super SloMo? No,
but isn't wasn't that an episode of that one show
Time Work? Yeah? Yeah, the Discovery Show. It is super cool, dude.
If you look at it in slow motion, you like
would pop the bubble, and you know, when you see
it in regular motion, it looks like it just pops
in a big burst, But from where you touch it
(12:00):
spreads and an arc all around the whole thing, and
you see it slowly popping as it goes around. It's
just really cool. Nice. It's neither here nor there though,
but it's still pretty like you're a descence. Right. So
what we have now is um if if that if
light from white light uh hits a transparent object, and
(12:24):
it's a multilayered transparent objects, say like oil on type
of water, or one side of a bubble and the
bottom side of the bubble, some light's gonna reflect off,
some's gonna make it through the bottom. Some of that
will reflect off, most will will go through. But if
the light from the bottom and the top are in
phase with one another, in an even phase, right, separated
(12:46):
by one two, three four five wave links rather than
you know, one point three five wavelengths, they'll be in
phase and they'll amplify each other. If it's white light,
then we're going to see, depending on our ang goal
all the colors of the rainbow. You're in this iridescent state, right. Okay,
(13:06):
So what does this have to do with butterfly wings?
I'll tell you, buddy. Okay. Butterfly wings are transparent, and
the deal is why they look so striking compared to
let's say, a bubble, which is pretty but not as
striking as a butterfly. It's because there are many, many
more layers stacked on top of each other that the
light has to go through. When all those are in phase,
(13:28):
you get like super iridescence. Right. So with a with
a bubble, you have two chances right at the top
and the bottom two lousy chances. Right. With a butterfly wing,
the the cuticle of the scale of a butterfly wing, say,
has maybe a dozen So every every beam of light,
every wavelength of light has you know, a dozen chances
to reflect back, say half of those are in phase. Yeah,
(13:54):
and also depending on how because the surfaces. Um, if
you look at a butterfly cuticle, it looks kind of
like a Christmas tree, right, so there's like a it
looks like a Christmas tree, basically like a lego Christmas tree.
Will say, but the scales, actually I'm out the scales. Yeah, yeah,
(14:16):
the scale cuticles that make up the scales. Yeah, that's kitan.
That's the same thing we have in like our hair,
it's protein in our fingernails. Nice okay, sorry, Um, So
as it goes down the tree, you know, they get wider,
These surfaces get wider, and each one can can bounce
light back off, but they're spaced evenly. So let's say
(14:39):
that the space in between is two d nanimeters and
blue light is four hundred nanometers in wavelength. Since the
two hundred is half of four hundred, it's going to
give blue light a better chance to reflect back in phase,
which is why I stay on like the blue morphoe butterfly,
(15:01):
which has a space of two between the scales. The
space and the scales appears so blue because blue has
a likelier chance of reflecting back in phase and being
amplifying in this iridescent manner, and the morpho doesn't that
actually venture into ultra the ultra violet spectrum? Yeah, remember
(15:22):
the angle. Yeah, so if you're looking, let's say, at
the right is red and at the left is violet.
If you move too far to the left, everything's gone
because you've moved out of the visible spectrum of light.
And now what you're seeing is the brown pigment, but
who can see it is the butterfly. Yeah, the monarchs
are actually in their migration, their huge migration every year.
(15:43):
They use ultra violet markings. Uh, ultra violet um light
for guide posts basically, right, Yes, they do, and uh
it Also the other effect or the other reason, um
that you have this iridescence and on the scales is
it soaks up heat because butterflies are cold blooded, so
they rely on like the sun to be able to function.
(16:07):
So the fact that they're soaking up this heat from
the sun allows them to fly, right, which is pretty cool.
And we also remember pigment, don't forget still plays a
role in this too, right, So if you have if
you have a butterfly scale that's um constructed, contains chlorophyll,
so you have um a green pigment. Yes, let's go
with blue. Okay, Now let's go with yellow. Okay, say
(16:30):
say it's a butterfly scale. It's constructive melanin. So you
have yellow already, which it's reflecting back yellow and monochromatic
blue light. It's going to it's going to appear to
us as green because color mixing still has has an effect, right,
So pigment structural color green. Can we talk about the
(16:52):
wings for a second too, because I know people are
going to write in and say that's really cool, but
is it true that butterflies will die if you touch
their wings? Sort of not completely? You can touch a
butterfly wing. Like, if you've ever touched a butterfly wing,
you'll notice you have like powder on your hands. Yeah,
those are the scales. Those are the scales. They are
that fine that they kind of disintegrate into powder. And
in theory, you can touch a butterfly wing without killing them,
(17:15):
but if you break it. They have little veins. They're
all connected by little veins, So essentially, if you disconnect
the veins from the fore wing and the hind wing,
that's when the butterfly is gonna die. And they're so
tender that it's really easy to happen. So in effect,
you probably will kill a butterfly if you mess with
their wings, but if you just happen to graze against it,
(17:36):
maybe not. No need to squish it after just such
a slight intrusion, right, Yeah, And moss, I think get
a bum wrap because they're not as pretty. Yeah, because
they're mainly mel what what was it, melitan, melanin melanin
mainly like brown and yellow, black and white. And they
also have a frenulum, which is a spine, and butterflies
(17:59):
don't have that. Right. Also, moths tend to be fatter
and fly at dusk or at night. Well, yeah, and
that's why butterflies get all the credit, because you're out
on a nice spring day in the garden and butterflies
were everywhere, and then at night you're hanging out by
the porch and you're freaked out by the moths everywhere,
like going towards the light. Well not only that, um,
there's there. The structure of a moth's wing is very,
(18:21):
very similar to the structure of butterflies transparent filmy scales.
For some reason, I guess it's because they do fly
at night. They are not iridescent. They don't appear iridescent,
although they would in sunlight. But they're part of the
same family scientifically, big happy family. Yeah, what was the family? Uh, Lepidoptera?
(18:43):
Was that lepidoptera? Lipidoptera. There's like a hundred and fifty
thousand varieties within that family and lepidoptera I means scaled
wings boom. Yeah, it's a great place to finish, don't
you think? Sure? You got to we recap Oh, I
don't think so. The party we explained it, well, I
think so, all right, because I feel more confused than
(19:04):
I did before. Well, you brought sound into it, but
I thought that was a very clever way to go
about it. Well, thanks a lot. If you want to
learn more about butterfly wings and they're striking colors, type
in butterflies striking colors in the handy search bar, how
stuff works dot Com brings up a pretty cool article
by Jennifer Horton. Hey, Chuck, chucks me from the future.
(19:25):
The future are idiot. Past seals have no idea whe're
doing this right now, right, but we do because we're
from the future, indeed, and you know what we're here
to do, don't you. We're interrupting our podcast for a reason.
T Shirt Winners announced. This is one of the if
you were a winner that you were guaranteed I mentioned
on the show, and this fulfills that application. Yes, this
(19:47):
is um. We've got the lawyers behind us that their
briefcases in bullwhips, right, yes, and uh, Chuck, we picked five.
I'm glad we picked five because we had like more
than seventy jries, right. I wanted to pick ten. I
wanted to pick twenty three. Um, and we actually did
have like a top twenty three at one point and
finally whittled it down time and time again, and we
(20:08):
came up with the five winners and they're announced on
the blog. There's an image gallery on how Stuff Works.
You can go onto our blogs at how stuff works
dot com and look for the blog post entitled we
Got your T shirt. We got your stuff you should
Know T shirt contest winners right here, uh, and that'll
take you into the site to check them out. You
(20:29):
can also get the shirts on the Discovery channel store
right yeah, there for sale. Yeah. You just go onto
the I Think store dot Discovery dot com and do
a search for stuff you Should Know and it brings
up all five of these magnificent T shirts. Right. So,
the names of the winning designers, the five brilliant individual
human beings who created these amazing designs, right, Their names
(20:53):
are what chuck Well first, these are in no particular order.
By the way, Um, we have Peter Feek or fight
Or We've been debating endlessly and he did a really
cool design of this old school microphone and it's sort
of logo looking. It makes us look like we're really pros. Yeah,
I call it hot Mike Hot Mike, Yeah, I like it. Uh.
And then of course there's Suki Anderson. Yeah, out of Kentucky,
(21:17):
I believe, I think, and she made what I think
is the coolest picture I've ever seen in my life. Yeah,
it's the baby with the fly on its forehead. Yes,
and don't worry. Yeah. I said on the blog that
it's it's unsettling and comforting at the same time, and
it's very hard to achieve. Agreed. So that was one
of our favorite ones. And then we went with Brad
(21:38):
Wilson's brain design, which is awesome. Yeah, we got a
lot of brain designs, so you guys were thinking along
the same lines, which means you're all smart and cool.
And that was the brain as as a representation of
our show is really, I think, pretty cool, and this
was what we thought looked best on a T shirt.
Brad nailed it. Yeah, he nailed it definitely. Uh. Matt
(21:58):
Stevenson came up with what I've dubbed the wood cut
parade right right, Our fans are gonna love this one. Yeah.
It's a it's a series of medieval characters I would say, skeleton, bishop,
a monk, a jester, um and they are carrying banners
let's say s y s K. They're leading the parade.
(22:20):
The stuff you should know parade from medieval times. Yeah,
and I said on the site it looks like a
paraded one to hide behind a tree and watch. It's awesome.
It's very cool. And then lastly, Chuck, I'm going to
leave this one to you because I can't pronounce this
guy's last name. Yes, we have Scott y A C
y s h Y, and I'm gonna say, yeah, yeah,
(22:40):
yakin ya kishin, Scott, whatever your last name, let's try
that one to Scott Yukishan if that is you. You
are one heck of a designer, my friend. And you
did the very cool caricature of Josh and I and
from our mouths and balloons. You have different caricatures of
different episodes and so much camaraderie between us. You know,
(23:02):
we just look like we are having a heck of
a time gaining the podcast as a sixties illustration. It's
very cool. One of my favorite ones to super awesome.
So Scott, Matt, Brad, Suky, Peter, thank you very much
to all of you guys, uh and thank you to
everybody who sent in. From something created in rich text
format to something that was obviously made by a professional
(23:24):
graphic designer, we appreciate all of you, guys, and thank
you very much for taking the time to lend us
your brains and creativity. That's awesome that we were blown away.
It was very cool. You're all very talented. Okay, and
now let's go back to our stupid um selves from
the past. I predict that it's going I'm gonna say
some assin I thing about the handy search bar. Watched.
(23:47):
Uh that means since I said handy searchbar, Chuck, are
you ready for this? Listener mail, Josh, I'm just gonna
call this, uh stuff you should know educating prisoner of America.
I like this one. This is a good one. Well,
prisoners of Virginia. At least, right which is in America?
Isn't it still it's a commonwealth. I don't know if
(24:08):
it counts. Oh, that's right, weirdos. All right, This from
Maria in Amelia, Virginia. I guess you have a prison there. Hi, guys,
I thought you might be interested to know that I
use your podcasts as a resource to teach writing to
inmate students. I'm a G. E. D. Teacher at a
men's president in Virginia. Writing is one of the weakest
skills for my students, and many of them never learned
(24:29):
to write as far as secondary school. Uh, and they
were afraid to write as adults, so they're sort of
illiterate or completely illiterate in some cases. Well, I mean,
think about it, Chuck, WoT is writing if not a
series of choices of what you're going to share with people,
it can be very intimidating. I burned your podcast to
a c D and replay one in class because we
(24:51):
don't have internet for obvious reasons. The men listen to
your podcast, they take notes, and then they must write
an article based on what we said. They practice writing
sentence is and paragraphs in this way. The subject matter
is of interest to them, some more than others. I'm
afraid to play the moonshine one as much as I
would like to. I know they would be interested even
if I skipped the parts where you make the still
(25:12):
and give the general recipe. So she won't do that,
because you know they'll build a moonshine still. I'll bet
they already know how the menhorns. Yeah, I think so. Uh.
Some of these guys have been down a long long time,
so they appreciate something to think about that isn't about
sentencing and parole hearings. Thank you for your material. My
family and I enjoy the podcast and they do a
real service to people. So we are actually educating prisoners
(25:37):
of a mayor. I know. That's awesome. So if you
guys are in prison right now, if you're in the
in the pokey in the who scale and you're listening now,
we just want to say good luck. You can turn
your life around, do your hard time, come out a
better person, don't do crimes again, and get your g
E D. And you know, get a get a job,
and and good luck to you. That's what I say.
(26:00):
And remember when you make a decision writing, don't look back.
Really such your advice. Yeah, that is my advice. Actually,
all right, you can always write something else. That's a
good point. Yeah, if you want to let us know
how we are changing the world for the better with
this podcast, and it's an email to stuff podcast at
how stuff works dot com for more on this and
(26:26):
thousands of other topics, does it how stuff works dot com.
Want more how stuff works, check out our blogs on
the house stuff works dot com home page. Brought to
you by the Reinvented two thousand twelve camera. It's ready.
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