The image in the mirror is inverted left to right and right to left as an optical phinomina but not head is shown in the botton and feet are shown in the top.
2007-10-04 19:01:05 · 6 answers · asked by dswaroop1 1 in Science & Mathematics ➔ Physics
A mirror doesn't invert images at all. It shows them exactly as they are. When you look at your left hand in the mirror, it is on your left side, and your right hand is on the right side. You only imagine that it is reversed because you are accustomed to the idea that when you meet another real-life person (which your mirror image resembles), you expect their left hand to be on your right side and their right hand to be on your left side. Since your mirror image fails to do this, you consider it as reversed.
Imagine if you lived in a world where everyone always walked with their left side facing north and their right side facing south, all day all time. You'd be facing east, so what would you do if you wanted to go west? you'd flip upside down and walk on your hands, upside down, so your left side still pointed north and your right side pointed south. Now, in this crazy world, when you are walking on your hands going west and you meet someone walking on their feet going east, you'd think it was perfectly normal that your feet are where their hands are and your hands are where their feet are, but their left hand always matches your left hand and your right hand always matches your right hand. Now you encounter a mirror and see your own reflection, which you mistake for a person. You are immediately struck by the fact that the mirror image does NOT place its feet where your head is and its head where your feet are, so you would say that this image is upside down, compared to what you expected to see if you met a person walking toward you.
Another way to look at it is with a sheet of paper with your name written on it with ink. Stand in front of the mirror, but don't look at the mirror, look at the paper, holding it normally so you can read your own name. Now look at the mirror, turning the paper around so it faces toward the mirror and now try to read the name. Does it appear backwards? That's because you turned the piece of paper around. The mirror hasn't reversed anything. You are the one who reversed it when your turned the paper away from yourself. If you had flipped the paper vertically instead of horizontally, the image of the word would look upside down rather than left-right reversed. In either case, you are the one who caused the inversion, when you flipped the paper. The mirror only shows you exactly what is there in front of you, without any reversal.
Now try it again with a piece of tracing paper and some really dark ink. Don't look at the mirror, look at the paper, holding it normally. Now look at the mirror without turning the paper around. Just look at the mirror so you see the backside of the paper and you can see the ink where it soaked through the paper to the other side. Can you read your name? yes you can. It is not reversed, nor is it upside down, because you didn't flip the paper, and the mirror has not reversed it either.
2007-10-04 20:16:20 · answer #1 · answered by dogwood_lock 5 · 0⤊ 0⤋
The thing about a mirror is that it doesn't invert left and right.. it inverts front and back. It only LOOKS like it switches left and right because you're looking at an image which appears to be a person looking at you, and you therefore attribute their right hand to the image of your left hand.
2007-10-04 19:18:24 · answer #2 · answered by Yokki 4 · 4⤊ 0⤋
An elaborate exposition of ideas formerly proposed by Navon (1987) is presented. It notes that the real source of the perception of reversal is not the one suggested by naive cause attribution: Whereas the mirror does not discriminate between frontal axes, frontal encounters do. Mirror images thus appear to be reversed along a planar axis - the horizontal one, in our ecology - because they suggest a prototypical frontal encounter, yet deviate from it in a lawful manner. The deviation is due to the fact that, unlike in mirror viewing, in any frontal encounter, homologue intrinsic sides are opposite to each other only along one planar axis. The distinguished axis, namely that particular axis whose homologue poles ARE opposite to each other in a prototypical frontal encounter within a given ecology, would constitute there the mirror-invariant axis. A generalization to other coordinate systems, other encounters and other ecologies follows. Finally, other accounts of the issue are critically reviewed.
2007-10-04 19:14:20 · answer #3 · answered by seniorr___`` 2 · 0⤊ 0⤋
What do you mean it's not inverted top and bottom? Try laying down on the floor and you'll see that it's inverted top and bottom. Only that you'll be calling one side "top", and the other "bottom".
Technically speaking, what you see in a mirror is a point symmetry, not a line symmetry.
2007-10-04 19:15:05 · answer #4 · answered by Scythian1950 7 · 1⤊ 0⤋
probable the comparable people who got here up with a fashion for us to debate something that's smart. If we did not all use the comparable technique of describing splendid and left, would any human beings ever discover our thank you to everywhere?
2016-10-21 02:35:11 · answer #5 · answered by ? 4 · 0⤊ 0⤋
In simple terms, because your eyes are side by side on your face rather than on top of each other.
2007-10-04 19:10:21 · answer #6 · answered by Miss Sally Anne 7 · 0⤊ 1⤋