Model X Rainbow Effect

[ecrsail]

It rained today. Now for most of the country, this is not worth starting a new post about, but in southern California, rain is not so frequent. Upon returning to my X after the very brief deluge, I was struck by the beautiful multicolored reflection patterns exhibited by the rainwater beading on the windshield.

What's going on here? At first I thought I was merely seeing an artifact of the additional coatings that are present on the upper half of the X windshield. But the edge of the rainbow colors follows the path of the wipers. It seems whatever is causing the colorful reflection is disturbed by the thin layer of wiper rubber residue that must get deposited on the windshield when the wipers are activated.

Regardless, I found this beautiful.

 

[bonnie]

More pics of it here: Bonnie's Xcellent Adventure w/X Sig 2 - Config, Delivery, Roadtrip

There are also some other threads. It's the UV coating on the glass that causes the coloring you're seeing.

 

[ecrsail]

Thanks Bonnie. I figured the coatings were responsible for the color, but found it interesting how "sensitive" the appearance of the color is to any "contamination" on the outer windshield. In addition to the color disappearing wherever the wipers had previously traversed, even a fingerprint appeared to disrupt the colorful reflections....