A simple but extremely surprising mirror experiment has gone viral on TikTok and other video platforms; This led to an interesting question: Even if you disconnect an object and a mirror with a piece of paper between them, how can you still see that object in the mirror as you move?
With so many users on TikTok asking how this is possible, these viral videos also make a great excuse to talk about mirrors.
Despite being an ordinary object, the mirror can easily upset our normal thinking system. The first simple mistake we automatically make is assuming that mirrors rotate objects. The reason we make this assumption is because we are a species that evolved by looking after others. When we raise our right hand while looking in the mirror, our mirror counterpart appears to be raising his left hand, but in fact he is not raising his left hand, still the same hand is being raised.
A mirror doesn’t actually rotate objects
Even though our brain suggests this when looking in the mirror, we shouldn’t believe it. In reality, a mirror reverses from the outside to the inside. Mirrors show an inside-out version of the world.
When you look at an object, imagine straight lines running through your eyes to every part of that object you can see. If you were looking at yourself, you would see those rays bounce back to you. It would be like putting a perfect mask on your face and then taking it off and pushing it out. These are the same inside-out features.
However, for the object behind the paper, the impressive feature of the mirror emerges when you move, and you can see the law of reflection more clearly with this movement.
The fact that light rays can follow a direct path between the object and the mirror is not important for us to see the object in the mirror. The important thing is to find a path between our eye, the mirror and the object we want to see.
The light still travels straight, but when it encounters the mirror, it is reflected in our eyes at the same angle it hit the mirror. As a result of this reflection, a virtual image emerges inside the mirror. As long as a ray can reflect from the mirror at the same angle and draw a path between the object and our eye, the image of that object will be seen “inside” the mirror…
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