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We illuminate a soap film with white light. White light is a mixture of various wavelengths or colours. On the soap film, we observe a pattern consisting of various coloured stripes, with the periodic sequence of the stripes becoming increasingly narrow towards the bottom.
We can assume that, due to gravity, the soap film increases in thickness towards the bottom. It consequently looks as though the pattern depends upon the thickness of the soap film.
If we consider that the light that hits the soap film was originally perceived by us as white light, it appears that red and green stripes occur wherever a wavelength disappears from the mixture. Thus, if a wavelength, in other words a colour, is removed from the incident white light, the complementary colour becomes visible on the soap film. We moreover observe that the colour appears to vary in intensity within the coloured stripes. How can colour pattern be explained? Just as with the acoustic waves, the observations lead us to the phenomenon of interference.
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