why does a plain mirror give a laterally inverted image and not upside down?

Answer 1

The reason is that up and down are absolute directions (in our ordinary experience) but left and right depend on the viewer. Let's rename left and right and see what happens.

Place a green dot on your right hand and a red dot on your left hand. Then imagine, say, that you're in New York City, looking northwest at your mirror. You stretch out your arms and point to the sides as you look into the mirror. You are looking toward Westchester. Your green hand is pointing toward Connecticut. Your red hand is pointing toward New Jersey.

The image in the mirror is doing exactly the same thing. Its green hand is pointing toward Connecticut and its red hand is pointing toward New Jersey. In that sense, red and green (or right and left) haven't been inverted any more than up and down have.

Answer 2

Because the incident ray is perpendicular to the plane mirror surface and the ray which is supposed to be coming from the virtual image also meets the plane mirror perpendicularly hence only side wise inversion of the object is possible.

it can form vertically inverted image of the object provided the object is on the plane mirror.

Answer 3

When u face the mirror u see your reflection in the mirror. i.e: light rays gets reflected straight . The image is looking straight at you (facing you). So your right is left in the picture and vice versa. If a concave mirror is used then you will stand upside down in the mirror since the rays will cross each other at the focal point.

Answer 4

I love this question because it seems to be a real question but isn't.

Say you have a white wall in front of you. Then, you take a roller full of paint and paint your front side. Now, covered in paint, you walk up and press yourself against the wall, making an imprint.

If you stand back and look at that image, has the right and left side been flipped? Nope. Right hand touched right side of image, left hand touched left. This is just what happens with the surface of a mirror. Nothing is reversed. It seems reversed because you are used to looking at people face on who have turned around, switching right and left, so that their right is on your left and visa versa.

It's the fact that things are not switched that befuddles us.

Answer 5

the image in a plane mirror is laterally inverted and not upside down because your body is symmetric from left to right not from upside down an you see the whole world in upside down image not in left to right image

Answer 6

Rays of light reflected from an object are inversely reflected back thus forming an inverted image.

Answer 7

Mirrors don't invert. Minds do. Left is left. Your mind expects right. Because of symmetry planes.
Up is still up.
Get it? no? google group theory.

Answer 8

Just a hypothesis!!
Things appear to be flippered horizontally (instead of vertically) because our eyes are side-by-side. If our eyes were one on top of the other then things may be a bit different.

Answer 9

study science

Answer 10

Good.