the.com/iridescence
color that lies about its source, painting with structure instead of pigment.
means The shimmering play of colors on a surface that shifts as you move or change your angle, like a soap bubble, oil slick, or peacock feather.
from From Latin 'iris,' meaning rainbow — itself borrowed from Greek 'iris,' the rainbow and the goddess who personified it, the messenger who slid down the arc between gods and mortals. The Greeks built the word from a root suggesting 'to bend' or 'curve.' English added '-escence,' a suffix denoting a process or state in bloom, to make 'iridescence' a 19th-century coinage — the act of being rainbow-like, caught in the moment of shimmering.
- no pigment
- comes from light interference, not dye
- angle trick
- shifts hue as you tilt your view
- beetle armor
- some beetles shine via stacked nanoscale layers
- oil slicks
- rainbow films thinner than a wavelength of light
- peacock fraud
- feathers are brown, the blue is illusion
morpho butterfly wings — blue iridescence from microscopic scales that refract light, found in central and south american rainforests
peacock feathers — iridescent eye-spots (ocelli) created by thin-film interference in the tail feathers of indian peafowl
abalone shell — mother-of-pearl nacre with iridescent layers of aragonite and conchiolin from pacific coast mollusks