Re: What's with mirrors?

[Roger Eichhorn <eichhorn@xxxxxx>]

From Wikipedia:

Mirror image

If one looks in a mirror, one's image reverses (e.g., if one raises one's right hand, his left hand will appear to go up in the mirror). However, a mirror does not "swap" left and right, any more than it swaps top and bottom. A mirror reverses the forward/backward axis, and we define left and right relative to front and back. Flipping front/back and left/right is equivalent to a rotation of 180 degrees about the vertical axis (in the same way that text which is back-to-front andupside-down simply looks like it has been rotated 180 degrees on the page). Therefore, looking at an image of oneself with the front/back axis flipped is the same as looking at an image with the left/right axis flipped and the whole figure rotated 180 degrees about the vertical axis, which is exactly what one sees when standing in front of a mirror.

Sent from my iPad

On Nov 18, 2011, at 2:22 PM, PhotoRoy6@xxxxxxx wrote:

My guess is that it has something to do with how the molecules are lined up in the mirror surface?   As to top and down it must just be a different orientation  of the mirroring object.

When a lake surface acts like a mirror it produces what I would characterize as an up and down reflection.

Roy

 

 

 

In a message dated 11/18/2011 12:54:26 P.M. Eastern Standard Time, Gregory.Fraser@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx writes:

My son asked me why a mirror only flips things left to right and not top to bottom or diagonal to diagonal? How does it know which way I'm looking at it? Of course I gave him my standard reply "It's Satan punishing you for not respecting your father," but it made me curious too. Anyone know the answer?

 

Greg