2007-12-13 23:19:35 · 15 answers · asked by Rock star 2 in Science & Mathematics ➔ Physics
Mirrors are made upside down to avoid that problem...
2007-12-13 23:23:02 · answer #1 · answered by Anonymous · 1⤊ 4⤋
Entirely because of the way you are looking at the mirror! If you were standing on a horizontal mirror and looking down, your feet would be at the top of the mirror image and your head would be underneath. But normally, you're standing in front of a vertical mirror and the image appears behind the mirror.
What is actually happening is that "towards" and "away" are reversed: the reflection of an object in front of a mirror appears to have come from behind the mirror. It is as though you are looking at the reflection from the opposite direction, which is why left and right appear reversed. You can see the effect most clearly with a drawing on a piece of thin paper: the view in the mirror is the same as the view through the paper.
A ray of light always bounces off a mirror at the same angle at which it strikes it. The rays bouncing off the mirror appear to have come from a point somewhere behind the mirror.
You should be able to draw some simple diagrams to convince yourself. Draw a line representing the mirror. Draw two lines representing rays of light from any point in front of the mirror, bouncing off the mirror (at the same angle as they hit -- measure with a protractor, mark the same angle on the opposite side and draw from the impact through your mark); then extend the lines backwards through the "mirror" to find out where they cross. That is where that point in real life appears in the mirror image. Repeat for several points.
2007-12-13 23:43:47 · answer #2 · answered by sparky_dy 7 · 3⤊ 0⤋
Mirror does not reverse the image by itself, instead you have reversed the mirror to make it to be facing you and hence caused the reversing of the image in the mirror. Otherwise you cannot see your image in the mirror. That is you and the mirror are facing opposite means not in the same direction and geometrically both are placed themselves at 180-degree difference. Mathematically, there is 180-degree difference between you and mirror, which is inevitable to look your image in the mirror. Also light rays get reflected in the opposite direction at the same position, which is straight against the person on the mirror. Therefore your left side is the right side of the mirror and right side is the left side of the mirror. Hence you miss feel that the mirror has reversed your image.
Also, as the angle of the mirror changes angle of the image also changes. When the mirror is kept horizontally at our legs, image vanishes, indicating you cannot see your own vertically inverted image in the mirror since the light rebounded from your body does not reach your eyes instead it gets reflected away from you and reaches the eye of the person standing at the opposite side of the mirror.
Now, keep the mirror below the horizontal position from your leg in the vertical position facing opposite to you(you may stand on a table and hang over the mirror so as to it be at right below your leg, and at a distance away from you), now you will find your image is inverted as well as reversed. This is also asserting the difference in angle between you and the mirror. Here to keep yourself in the direction of the mirror you will have to make two kinds of rotation one in the horizontal direction another in the vertical direction at the rate of 180 degree each time, totally 360 degree. So because of this difference between you and the mirror, image is appearing as reversed and inverted.
Once again, imagine a tall building just on the bank of a lake. Image of this building in water of the lake looks horizontal or vertically inverted w.r.t .the position of the viewer. This is because of the total internal refraction of the light. Don’t confuse that it is not the image of the observer.
In the same way you can go on thinking and analyzing the several phenomena of reflection and refraction.
I think this much is enough to comprehend the phenomenon of reflection.
2007-12-14 01:33:38 · answer #3 · answered by shasti 3 · 1⤊ 0⤋
Because in the mirror, right hand sends light from our right side and left hand sends light from our left side... so in the mirror the person we see appears to have our right hand as his left and left as his right. Our right hand's image appears in the right side of the mirror and left hand's image appears in the left of the mirror so the effect of lateral inversion is seen.
Vertical inversion doesnt occur because the position of the object and image is along the same straight horizontal line in all cases. that's due to the plane of the mirror.
2007-12-13 23:31:44 · answer #4 · answered by gauravragtah 4 · 1⤊ 1⤋
A mirror inverts only perpendicular to its axis.. You are standing vertically like the mirror, so you are parallel to the axis of the mirror.. Your right and left are perfendicular to that axis, so they are inverted.. No vertical inversion takes place, only lateral inversion..
2007-12-14 19:42:49 · answer #5 · answered by Ann 3 · 0⤊ 0⤋
right becomes left in mirror beacause of lateral inversion. and lateral inversion means left side appears to be right side in a mirror.
2007-12-17 02:19:52 · answer #6 · answered by pooja b 1 · 0⤊ 0⤋
yeah what the other guys said about back to front, unless you have a concave or convex mirror, then you do get some upside down action.
2007-12-13 23:24:07 · answer #7 · answered by frankzhere 3 · 1⤊ 1⤋
Didn't we have this one a little while back? Mirrors reverse 'back to front' not L/R or up/down.
2007-12-13 23:22:36 · answer #8 · answered by za 7 · 3⤊ 1⤋
this question is difficult to solve without a diagram however if u see after reflection when rays from our feet are reflectedwe see it downwards only(do it using a diagram)
2007-12-16 02:13:46 · answer #9 · answered by Anonymous · 0⤊ 0⤋
because the mirror is another world behind the glass that your mind only sees
2007-12-13 23:35:42 · answer #10 · answered by none 1 · 0⤊ 2⤋