Reflected Colors

This past Sunday evening we decided to go for a walk in the woods behind our home. And just as we were leaving I spotted this reflection. And with my point and shoot camera I quickly snapped a few pics.

What we see here is the rather colorful reflection of a clear plastic lid in our stone kitchen counter top. You can see in the image below that the actual lid is clear and color free.

Curious.

Of course, the answer can be found here, at Les Cowley's awesome Atmospheric Optics site. Its a combination of polarization and birefringence.

I told you physics is fun.