Unanswered: Unraveling the Mystery of Extended Thinking

[This Is Me]

Homework Statement

Many butterflies have colored wings due to pigmentation. In some, however, such as the morpho butterfly, the colors do not result from pigmentation and, when the wing is viewed from different angles, the colors change. Explain

Relevant Equations

(there are none)

This is an extended thinking portion in my textbook, and I would really like to know why this is. I'm not too sure what the answer to this is, and unfortunately, there is no answer to extended thinking in my textbook. I've been trying to figure this out for some time now and I'm completely stumped.

 

[PeroK]

How does pigmentation work?

 

[This Is Me]

How does pigmentation work?

Well in humans, skin gets its colour from a pigment called melanin which is made from special cells in the skin. And in animals, I believe they can actually manipulate it?

 

[Ibix]

Have you googled "morpho butterfly" and had a quick read of the "coloration" section of the Wikipedia article? That'd be a good start and a lot faster than waiting for us to paraphrase it.

 

[This Is Me]

Have you googled "morpho butterfly" and had a quick read of the "coloration" section of the Wikipedia article? That'd be a good start and a lot faster than waiting for us to paraphrase it.

I try not to google things, as that's not really what learning is about, but in this case, I guess I'll take a look.

 

[Ibix]

I try not to google things, as that's not really what learning is about, but in this case, I guess I'll take a look.

I would say that reading what's already known is about half of what learning is about - nobody expects you to derive everything from scratch. The other half is stuff like evaluating sources, learning how to manipulate your knowledge and generating new ideas, of course.

Sure, if you cut and paste the wiki article into your homework you might as well not bother. But reading it and looking at some of the links (especially structural coloration) and maybe some of the sources (wiki can misrepresent them so it's worth checking), maybe asking us some follow up questions if you don't understand, then writing it up in your own words is exactly what you are supposed to do here, I would think.

 

[pasmith]

"When [something] is viewed from different angles, the colors change" immediately brings Newton's double-prism experiment to mind...

 

[phinds]

I try not to google things, as that's not really what learning is about, but in this case, I guess I'll take a look.

Here of PF we PREFER that you start by doing some research yourself. This is not intended to be a simple Q&A forum where you ask questions and get answers, it is intended to help people who have made some effort on their own BEFORE coming here, if at all possible/reasonable.

 

[PeroK]

Well in humans, skin gets its colour from a pigment called melanin which is made from special cells in the skin. And in animals, I believe they can actually manipulate it?

I was expecting an answer in terms of the properties of light.

 

[haruspex]

I try not to google things, as that's not really what learning is about,

Since it comes under the textbook heading "extended thinking", I endorse that approach here.
Consider posts #7 and #9.