Inspired by intricate microscopic structures giving vivid colours in butterfly wings, Roy Sambles has created ‘metamaterials’ to manipulate light, microwaves and radio waves in unusual ways.
Professor Sambles from the University of Exeter is the winner of the 2012 Faraday Medal awarded by the Institute of Physics for pioneering research in experimental physics.
Roy Sambles uses the intricate nanostructures found in butterfly wings that scatter light, to build structures that will scatter microwaves in the same way.
Transcript
If you look at nature there are some stunning colour effects. Rainbows are amazing things. Stunningly bright, vivid butterflies from South America. Dragonflies, how do they achieve those gorgeous greens? We just need to know!
We found that within the wingscale, which is more or less fingernail material, the butterfly had created a variety of different vivid colour effects.
By unravelling the butterflies, we found a whole raft of new metamaterial type structures. If you structure matter on a fine enough scale, it doesn’t respond in a simple way like a bucket of water. It has new properties.
The medal came as a total surprise to me, I have to say. With a large number of very able PhD students down the years, I’ve been fortunate and privileged. To receive the award, in a sense, on their behalf is, yes, immensely pleasing.
I go around from place to place talking about physics and I find that from 3 year olds to 93 year olds they are still fascinated. How does it all work? That’s it, isn’t it? How does it all work?
About the film
Filmed on location at:
- Department of Physics, University of Exeter, Exeter, United Kingdom. September 2012.
Director: Martyn Bull
Producer: Thomas Delfs
Camera: Mark Whatmore
Editors: Liam Angell, Mike Willbourne
Cast: Professor Roy Sambles
Production company: insitu
Client: Institute of Physics
Camera: RED Epic, Canon 550D
Martyn James Bull { Writer + Filmmaker + Creative Director } 