I keep hearing that other color eyes have pigment to make them that color but with blue eyes they have no pigment and it is the physical structure that only reflects blue.
How is that any different than any other color?
Doesn’t red paint only look red because it reflects red light?
Doesn’t brown pigment only look brown because it reflects brown light?
I thought that is how all color worked, by reflecting only that kind of light.
People say it about blue eyes like it’s somehow different but it sounds the same to me
In: 7
A lot of “blue” you see in living things in nature is something called “structural color”, where the color is the product of scattering of light, or very specific ways of reflecting light, but is not the result of a blue pigment that is blue and absorbs other light.
You see this often on butterflies, and these make a good example for what’s coming next.
A lot of color you see elsewhere is due to pigment. That is you can take a yellow/red/green/etc thing, grind it down, and then have a yellow/red/green powder/paste.
With structural color you can’t do this. Take the blue bits from a butterfly and grind them down and you won’t get a blue powder, because the blue you’re seeing is due to complex behaviors of light when it strikes a very specific layering of optical properties in the butterfly wings. Take away the precise layering and you don’t get the color anymore. There’s no blue dye in there, it’s all optical trickery.
Latest Answers