what does this happen with spoons?

Question

y is when u look at a spoon one way u see things up side down..and when u look at it the other way..its right side up.

Answer 1

It has to do with the angle that reflected light makes off the spoon. The underside of the spoon is convex (bulges outward in the middle). The top of the spoon is concave. The surfaces of the spoon act like mirrors. Concave and convex mirrors have different properties, depending on the location of the object being viewed.

These websites explain it with helpful diagrams:

http://www.physicsclassroom.com/Class/refln/U13L4a.html
http://www.physicsclassroom.com/Class/refln/u13l3e.html

Answer 2

A little bit of physics called optics. When you're looking at the inside of the spoon ( a concave, or dished out, surface) the image refected gets bounced back toward the center of the spoon, flipping the image you see. Yeah, hard to explain without pictures:

http://micro.magnet.fsu.edu/optics/lightandcolor/reflection.html

Read the top bit about reflection, then skip down to Figure 3, it shows the phenomenon you've mentioned. So, when you see something, you are seeing the light bounding off of it. When light is bouncing off a curved surface, it doesn't came straight at you, it comes at an angle. The curve inside the spoon is great for bouncing the light back across an imaginary center, top to bottom and left to right. So, the image coming from the lower right corner of the spoon will appear to you as the upper left.

The interactive Java Tutorials on the web page may help!

Answer 3

The bowl of the spoon acts like a mirror, and the curvature of the bowl causes the light rays being reflected to cross over themselves on the way to your eye. Basically the bowl of the spoon focuses the image at a point close to the spoon, but the light rays keep going past that point and that makes the image appear upside down.
Think of a straight string going from the top of the bowl to a point a few inches in front of the spoon but angled down so it crosses over the front of the spoon and ends up below it.
Now another straight string from the bottom of the bowl crossing in front and ending up above it.
Where the strings cross is the focal point, and the image would appear rightside up.
But where the strings are even with the bowl you see the "bottom" string on top and the "top" string on the bottom - that's like the upside down image.
Try it, you'll see what I mean.

Answer 4

One side is concave (dips inwards like a cave) and the other side is convex (dips out like a sphere). the concave one appears upside down because the reflection reflects off the edges of the spoon to the middle of it giving it the affect of being upside down. Hope this Helps!
AG

Answer 5

the spoon is curved so you see the reflection from the bottom. The other way it's curved outward so reflection stays the same.

Answer 6

well because of the concave and convex lenses of the spoon:-)

Answer 7

they must be magic spoons.

Answer 8

complicated matter. browse on bing and yahoo. this could help!

Answer 9

the reflection is different.

Answer 10

I never tried it..I'm going to now......