There is a lot of theory out there about light, colors, wave lengths and how and why we see with our eyes. This is my interpretation of when light simply gets stuck and confused.
This piece was created purely in Maya using a 3D fluid container, then converting the fluid to polygons. Mental ray’s dielectric material was then assigned to the polygon fluid. To get the colors to show up in the fluid’s reflection/refraction I placed a polygon plane behind it with a ramp texture assigned to color and specular (on a blinn shader). The polygon plane’s primary visibility was turned off when rendering with mental ray. The background environment was a sphere also assigned with a variation of the ramp texture. To get the flat looking colors and variations in color depth, the specular values of the blinn (plane behind fluid) and color gain in the ramp texture were blown out with high values.