Whenever you see petroleum oil spilled on a wet surface, it turns rainbow colored. That doesn’t happen with olive oil, or other liquids. Why do petroleum products change color that way?
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Ok. I understand that oil has a low surface tension (I wants to spread out), so it makes a thin film on top of the water. And I get the idea that some light reflects off the oil, while some goes through and reflects off the water underneath. I also understand the concept of a prism splitting light into the separate colors. But I don’t quite get how the two different surfaces reflecting light end up as the whole range of colors. Shouldn’t they all be the same distorted color? Or is it that my eyes are at different angles to the various parts of the oil slick, and the position of my eyes determines the angle the light is traveling from the surfaces, so I get different colors from different parts of the oil slick? And would that explain why the colors change as I move around and look at it from different angles?
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