Why is my reflection upside down when look at the concave side of a spoon and rightside up on the convex?

Question

This was question asked by a 6 year old at Thanksgiving Dinner - no one could give her a proper answer.

Answer 1

You are beyond the focus of the concave side so your sight lines cross to the other side of the spoon and you seem upside down. If you could get inside the focus (about 1/4"-1/2" in a spoon), your image would be right side up.
The convex side does not invert the image (but makes it smaller) because the sight lines converge behind the surface and therefore are bounced back from the same edge of the spoon as your body feature - head on top, etc.

Answer 2

Firstly, I will have to explain a principal of mirrors. Each mirror has a “Focus”, and it is defined by the point which parallel light will reflect through. Example, if I shot a laser pointer at a concave mirror, the beam would always pass though a single point, providing the beam is remains parallel. So if I had two laser pointers, and they shot parallel beams at the mirror, then the point at which they cross is the focus.
But, if you are behind the focus of the concave mirror, then the beam you shot at the top of the mirror, will have reflected downward through the focus, and would be on the bottom. Similarly, the beam you shot at the bottom of the mirror would reflect off the mirror, through the focus, and be at the top now. Thus, the location of the two beams is now upside down.
If you put your eye in front of the focus (very close to the spoon), you will find that the image of your eye will be the right way up. Take the spoon very slowly away from your eye, there will be a moment where the image will be unrecognizable, and then the image will be upside down. You would have just passed through the focus of the spoon.
In the case of a convex mirror, the focus is behind the mirror, so if I shot a beam at the top of the mirror, it would reflect upward, and the image would only get bigger, not smaller.