Summer Science Exhibition 2011 5-10 July | Free entry How nature
dresses to impress Pollia fruit has iridescent blue and UV
colour from rings laid down by cell walls. Colours in nature are
omnipresent and serve an essential role in providing a wide
range of signals: “I am fertile!”, “I am tasty!”, “I am
dangerous”. Nanostructures in plants produce special structural
colours that attract and guide animals. While the existence of
structural colours in animals is well known, in plants they were
thought to be rare. Now scientists have discovered that plants
as well as animals dress themselves in such structural colours,
and are exploring what they signal to pollinators and how to
mimic them in the lab. In this exhibit you will see plant
nanostructures, learn how these produce colours and see how they
appear to insects. Opal made from self-assembly of polymer
nanospheres shows structural colour changed by deformation.
Colours arise either from the selective absorption of light by
pigments, or through the interfere