how do you make a mirror out of air?

Question

Can this be done, I would assume you would have to bend the light waves back at yourself? I guess instantly freezing the air would create a mirror, but it probably wouldn't be dense enough to see anything. Heating it up could cause wator vapor to appear for a split second, and if the right amount of light hit it, it might shine back but probably wouldn't be useful.

Answer 1

Might be possible if the air was frozen solid with a polished surface. But vanity would cause severe frostbite!!! Since air has many compounds and elements, you'd pretty much have to be at absolute zero to do it. And I'm not sure you could "polish" solid air.

More likely the mirage explanation. Theoretically light refraction due to variable air density could bend it in a circle. If the circle was big enough.

But think about it ... the question didn't say the mirror had to be for looking at yourself. If you have a low enough angle of incidence, almost anything with some reflectivity can be a mirror. At what incident angle does light reflect off a thermal air boundary rather than refract or absorb into it? At that angle the air is acting as a mirror.

Turn on a base board heater, make the heat travel up the wall in a relatively uniform manner (if possible), put the side of your head against the wall and close the eye furthest away, with the other eye peer along the wall. It might work. On a hot day outside, you'd get the same effect lying on a hot roadway looking into the distance (don't burn yourself). Both are mirages.

It could also be by mixing it with Silicon. If you define air as just Oxygen, glass is SiO2. I gave a computer a headache once trying to add the O2 back into the Si *lol* funny part is it's true!

Answer 2

The reason for mirages is a layer of heater air that has slightly different optical properties, but the real secret is in something called "Brewster's angle". If a ray of light hits something, like an air layer, or better, the surface of a lake at an angle more perpendicular than Brewster's angle, it passes through. You see the bottom of the lake. But it the angle is a "glancing" angle, then even though it is clear water, it reflects and you see the colors of the sunset. Wiki Brewster's angle.

Answer 3

Air in contact with a heated surface like sand or even an asphalted road does act as a reflector or mirror (the phenomenon of mirage). But a real sharp mirror out of air? Not possible with present science.

Answer 4

I wonder if a hologram of a mirror would reflect your image in thin air the way you are asking

Answer 5

i'm specific he smells greater advantageous than you do. as nicely, there continues to be a residual scent of fire and brimstone from while Boy George became flying everywhere in the rustic campaigning on the taxpayers' greenback.

Answer 6

Hmm sound like you watch too much Star Trek to me.......Mirrors are made out of sand belive it or not

Answer 7

So you never heard of a mirage. I saw several.

Answer 8

It is possible using aerosol, or plasma (the fourth matter).

Answer 9

no i herd one thing you need is sand,but i for get what else.