Color

Similar colors can be seen in a thin film of oil, in broken glass and on the vivid wings of butterflies and other insects. Scientists explain this process by the terms, diffraction and interference. Diffraction and refraction both refer to the bending of light. Diffraction is the slight bending of light away from its straight line of travel when it encounters the edge of an object in its path. This bending is so slight that it is scarcely noticeable. The effects of diffraction become noticeable only when light passes through a narrow slit. When light waves pass through a small opening or around a small object, they are bent. They merge from the opening as almost circular, and they bend around the small object and continue as if the object were not there at all. Diffraction is the sorting out of bands of different wavelengths of a beam of light.

When a beam of light passes through a small slit or pin hole, it spreads out to produce an image larger than the size of the hole. The longer waves spread out more than the shorter waves. The rays break up into dark and light bands or into colors of the spectrum. When a ray is diffracted at the edge of an opaque object, or passes through a narrow slit, it can also create interference of one part of a beam with another.

Interference occurs when two light waves from the same source interact with each other. Interference is the reciprocal action of light waves. When two light waves meet, they may reinforce or cancel each other. The phenomenon called diffraction is basically an interference effect. There is no essential difference between the phenomena of interference and diffraction.

Light is a mixture of all colors. One cannot look across a light beam and see light waves, but when light waves are projected on a white screen, one can see light. The idea that different colors interfere at different angles implies that the wavelength of light is associated with its colors. A spectrum can often be seen on the edges of an aquarium, glass, mirrors, chandeliers or other glass ornaments. These colored edges suggest that different colors are deflected at different angles in the interference pattern.

The color effects of interference also occur when two or more beams originating from the same source interact with each other. When the light waves are in phase, color intensities are reinforced; when they are out of phase, color intensities are reduced.

When light waves passing through two slits are in phase there is constructive interference, and bright light will result. If the waves arrive at a point on the screen out of phase, the interference will be destructive, and a dark line will result. This explains why bubbles of a nearly colorless soap solution develop brilliant colors before they break. When seen in white light, a soap bubble presents the entire visible range of light, from red to violet. Since the wavelengths differ, the film of soap cannot cancel or reinforce all the colors at once. The colors are reinforced, and they remain visible as the soap film becomes thinner. A rainbow, a drop of oil on water, and soap bubbles are phenomena of light caused by diffraction, refraction, and interference. Colors found in birds such as the blue jay are formed by small air bubbles in its feathers. Bundles of white rays are scattered by suspended particles into their components colors. Interference colors seen in soap bubbles and oil on water are visible in the peacock feathers. Colors of the mallard duck are interference colors and are iridescent changing in hue when seen from different angles. Beetles, dragonflies, and butterflies are as varied as the rainbow and are produced in a number of ways, which are both physical and chemical. Here, the spectrum of colors are separated by thin films and flash and change when seen from different angles.

Light diffraction has the most lustrous colors of mother of pearl. Light is scattered for the blue of the sky which breaks up blue rays of light more readily than red rays.