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butterfly

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Some butterflies have shiny, vividly colored wings. From different angles you see different colors. This effect is called iridescence. How does it work? It turns out these butterfly wings are made of very fancy materials! Light bounces around inside these materials in a tricky way. Sunlight of different colors winds up reflecting off these materials in different directions. We're starting to understand the materials and make similar substances in the lab. They're called photonic crystals. They have amazing properties. Here at the Centre for Quantum Technologies we have people studying exotic materials of many kinds. Next door, there's a lab completely devoted to studying graphene: crystal sheets of carbon in which electrons can move as if they were massless particles! Graphene has a lot of potential for building new technologies — that's why Singapore is pumping money into researching it. Some physicists at MIT just showed that one of the materials in butterfly wings might act like a 3

butterfly The Butterfly, the Gyroid and the Neutrino John Baez August 13, 2015 Some butterflies have shiny, vividly colored wings. From different angles you see different colors. This effect is called iridescence . How does it work? It turns out these butterfly wings are made of very fancy materials! Light bounces around inside these materials in a tricky way. Sunlight of different colors winds up reflecting off these materials in different directions. We're starting to understand the materials and make similar substances in the lab. They're called photonic crystals . They have amazing propert

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