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Iridescence is an optical phenomenon characterized in the Oxford English Dictionary as the property of things that "[glitter] or [flash] with colours which change according to the position from which they are viewed," such as soap bubbles and butterfly wings.
The word is derived in part from the Greek word ιρις (transliterated as iris, meaning stem, whose plural is ιριδες, transliterated as irides). In Greek mythology, Iris is the personification of the rainbow, who acted as a messenger of the gods.
See also thin-film optics.
 This computed image shows the colours reflected by a thin film of water illuminated by unpolarized white light. The radius is proportional to the thickness of the film, and the polar angle is the angle of incidence. |
