The most reasonable explanation for this is the link between certain smells and happy memories. Many of us, as children, traveled with our parents and stops at the gas station might have meant the start of a new adventure or even a chance at a snack from the convenience store.
This natural psychological phenomenon is the most likely reason why you find yourself smiling every time you fill up at the gas station. Why Gasoline Looks Like a Rainbow Gasoline that is spilled on the ground creates a thin and spread out display of fun colors in the light. Read More: Avoiding Blind Spots By Properly Adjusting Side View Mirrors The thicker oil in parts of the spill will make the blue and purple tones, while the thinner spread oil will give off the yellow and red tones.
More From Palmen. Hence, a given disparity in the path length will cause constructive interference of certain colors, whereas other colors will not be observed because of destructive interference. Because the oil film gradually thins from its center to its periphery, different bands of the oil slick produce different colors. Newsletter Get smart. Sign up for our email newsletter. Already a subscriber? Sign in. Thanks for reading Scientific American. Create your free account or Sign in to continue.
See Subscription Options. Danielle finds out why petrol creates a rainbow effect when in contact with water, and how the behaviour of light can create all these colours, with the help of Professor Jeremy Baumberg Jeremy - The organic molecules in petrol float on top of water since they're hydrophobic, which means they don't like to mix with water.
The layer of petrol spreads out across the water but not evenly. In some places, it's only one molecule deep while in others it's much thicker.
Light reflects from both the top petrol surface but also the lower boundary between petrol and water. Danielle - This means that some light rays, ones that bounce off the petrol-water boundary, have to travel further than the rays that reflect directly off the surface of the petrol.
Making this longer journey can mean that a light wave reflected off the petrol water boundary has its peaks and troughs out of alignment with the waves that reflect directly off the surface of the petrol. When this happens, the two waves can cancel each other out, leaving a dark patch. But because the light that comes from the sun is white light, it contains all the different colours of the rainbow mixed together. The distances between the peaks and troughs of the waves in red light are much bigger than in blue light.
This means that while light waves of some colours will meet at the petrol surface out of alignment and cancel out, light of other colours will arrive back at the surface "in sync" where they can add together and make a brighter patch corresponding to that colour. Jeremy - Different colours of light have different wavelengths. So the reflected waves from the lower boundary come back with peaks and troughs slightly shifted depending on how far they had to travel through the petrol layer.
Danielle - And because the thickness of the oil varies across the surface, different places look different colours. Thank you professor Baumberg for that colourful answer. So, what did I find seeping out of a wet, iron and clay rich cliff? It was definitely a film, with a metallic rainbow sheen.
When you touched it it split into little fragments, and it was only on the bottom metre or so of the cliff. I can't find info anywhere!
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