{"id":500,"date":"2015-07-05T09:00:53","date_gmt":"2015-07-05T16:00:53","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/blogs.ubc.ca\/sumi\/?p=500"},"modified":"2015-07-03T00:11:47","modified_gmt":"2015-07-03T07:11:47","slug":"cracking-the-code-color","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.ubc.ca\/sumi\/2015\/07\/05\/cracking-the-code-color\/","title":{"rendered":"Cracking the code: color"},"content":{"rendered":"

\u201cMarble berries\u201d <\/a>have fruits that are not only blue, but shiny, metallic blue. Close up, you can also see flickers of rainbow<\/a>\u00a0colors.\u00a0As the berries’ leaves eventually wither from bright green to dull brown, you would expect these bright blue colors to disappear as well, but somehow the fruits keep\u00a0the same polished blue color for months, years, and even\u00a0decades.<\/p>\n

Now, soap bubbles may be transparent, but the light somehow makes rainbow colors on the surface as the bubbles float into the sky. Marble berries\u00a0and soap bubbles\u00a0actually have colors made in similar ways –\u00a0\u00a0and this is the secret to why marble berries have luminous and long-lasting\u00a0colors.<\/p>\n

\"Link<\/a>
Soap bubbles by Martin Fisch.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Surprisingly, it was was a physicist <\/em>working in materials chemistry <\/em>who taught me how this\u00a0plant produces<\/em>\u00a0color.<\/em>\u00a0By modifying a basic plant material, cellulose,\u00a0Dr. Silvia Vignolini<\/a>\u00a0is trying to recreate the marble berry (Pollia condensata<\/em>)’s intense\u00a0blue colors.\u00a0Imagine if we could make long-lasting color\u00a0to paint our houses or dye our clothes<\/a>\u00a0so they don’t fade, won’t turn white with bleach, and are much cheaper than dyes we currently use.<\/p>\n

A key point is that the marble berry and soap bubbles’s colors are produced by structural color<\/strong>. The berry is smooth, but on a microscopic (or even smaller nano-) scale, the berry has stacks of tiny arc-shaped structures on the surface. These shapes help amplify reflected light to produce an intense blue. Different thicknesses of cellulose add red and green to the mix, helping to create a hologram effect.\u00a0Usually, we see color\u00a0because of a material’s inherent chemical properties (pigment\/dye)<\/a>, but pigment would degrade<\/a>\u00a0after a while and the color fades. With structure creating color, the marble berries stay vivid metallic\u00a0blue as long as the surface structures stay intact.<\/p>\n

So far, blue is the most common structural color, but there are lots of other examples of\u00a0structural color:\u00a0the sparkly\u00a0red\u00a0on hummingbird necks<\/a>, cat eyes glowing in the dark<\/a>, or\u00a0peacock feathers that change color depending on the angle you look at them\u2026we’re making progress to\u00a0crack the code for nature’s vivid colors.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Inspired by the presentation: Vignolini, Silvia. “Photonic Structures in Plants and Cellulose Biomimetic: From Nature to Materials.” University of British Columbia. Vancouver, BC. 27 Jun 2014.\u00a0Related publication<\/a>\u00a0(doi:10.1073\/pnas.1210105109)<\/span><\/span><\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

\u201cMarble berries\u201d have fruits that are not only blue, but shiny, metallic blue. Close up, you can also see flickers of rainbow\u00a0colors.\u00a0As the berries’ leaves eventually wither from bright green to dull brown, you would expect these bright blue colors to disappear as well, but somehow the fruits keep\u00a0the same polished blue color for months, […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":21657,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[265,8940],"tags":[266305,838213,176322,1049667,1049669,569382,1049668,1049674,1049673,1049670],"class_list":["post-500","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-home","category-wildlife","tag-blue","tag-cellulose","tag-color","tag-iridescence","tag-marble-berry","tag-pigment","tag-pollia-condensata","tag-silvia-vignolini","tag-soap-bubbles","tag-structural-color"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ubc.ca\/sumi\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/500","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ubc.ca\/sumi\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ubc.ca\/sumi\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ubc.ca\/sumi\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/21657"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ubc.ca\/sumi\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=500"}],"version-history":[{"count":84,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ubc.ca\/sumi\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/500\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":587,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ubc.ca\/sumi\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/500\/revisions\/587"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ubc.ca\/sumi\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=500"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ubc.ca\/sumi\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=500"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ubc.ca\/sumi\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=500"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}