Forget About Mr. Hippo's Ducks How About The Mirror?

[Alf Witt]

There are a lot of intelligent minds on the forum so lets see who knows the answer to this one.

When you look in the mirror your image is reversed. If you hold something in your left hand it appears to be in your right hand in the mirror image. So why don't you also see your image upside down?

[Robski]

Is the mirror in Thailand?

[pumpuiman]

it's a reflection, not an inversion.

The eye perceives the light reflected by the mirror.

The mirror does not reverse images, it reflects them.

That's my stab at it......After reflecting for a while.

[Alf Witt]

it's a reflection, not an inversion.

The eye perceives the light reflected by the mirror.

The mirror does not reverse images, it reflects them.

That's my stab at it......After reflecting for a while.

That is just semantics. Whatever you call the phenomena why does it work from left to right but not from top to bottom?

[pumpuiman]

it's a reflection, not an inversion.

The eye perceives the light reflected by the mirror.

The mirror does not reverse images, it reflects them.

That's my stab at it......After reflecting for a while.

That is just semantics. Whatever you call the phenomena why does it work from left to right but not from top to bottom?

That's my point, it doesn't "work" left to right (though the mind may perceive it as so). There is no process involved whereby an inversion takes place.

It is a "mirror image"

No altering of the image actually takes place. The body being symmetrical as if an invisible line were drawn top to bottom divides us in two vertically, resulting in the mis perception.

Left and right are not constant directions like the points of a compass, if I face you and point right...and ask you to face me and do the same...we'll point in opposite directions. The concept of left and right should be replaced with east and west.....then no perceived inversion takes place. If we faced each other and were asked to point east, we would point in the same direction.

Now if I could go through the looking glass...........

Edited June 17, 2007 by pumpuiman

[pumpuiman]

After further reflection......The angle of the mirror has something to do with the mis perception as well. If we point at the ceiling or floor, and the mirror is on the wall, we see our reflections doing the same. If the mirror were mounted on the ceiling and we pointed "up" we would see an opposite direction in the mirror (pointing back at ourselves, or "down")

Now I'm not even sure what the heck I was on to with the angle business....I'm getting a headache

[Head Snake]

If you want to look at yourself upside down, get a glass sphere.

Move it towards you and away from you. It flips.

[lazeeboy]

If you want to look at yourself upside down, get a glass sphere.

Move it towards you and away from you. It flips.

my image is always upside down cos im always doing headstands

[chiliwasabi]

Back to front, upside down, left to right. None of this interests me, what I want to know is why, when I look at a mirror why do I not see the "Very, very handsome man" my wife sees?

I know that my wife's version of my looks is correct; after all, my mother has always said the same thing in similar terms.

[rychrde]

lol..i wondered where this topic had disappeared to!

ok...deep breath now...

the apparent left-right switch is a trick of the mind, a conceptual misunderstanding of what a mirror does. We humans are more or less symmetrical about the vertical axis. remove that symmetry for a moment and see what happens.

Say you put on a watch, doesn't matter which hand, just to break the symmetry. Stare at the mirror and raise your 'watch hand'. Which hand is raised in the mirror? look carefully! Why do people think it is the opposite hand? Because we make a mental transformation. We think the mirror image is a real person and we try to put ourselves into that person's place. We do this by stepping into the mirror and turning around! Now try that mental excercise. Where is your watch hand? It is NOT in the same hand as the mirror image is it? That's the fundamental mistake our brain makes. A mirror does not present us with a real person.

So what does a mirror actually do? OK, we call it a reflection, but that's too simple. What does it really transform. OK, back to your watch. Hopefully it is not a digital watch! Place the watch on your chest facing the mirror. The watch on your chest goes..erm...clockwise (I hope). What about the watch in the mirror? well, that one seems to go anti-clockwise. But step closer to the mirror, the hands on the two watches actually shadow eachother. So UP remains UP, Left remains Left etc. Turn the watch slightly and same - there is no left-right switch. So what is going on?

With your free hand point at yourself in the mirror, forefinger straight at you, thumb pointing upwards (like you're about to shoot yourself) and middle finger point inwards, at right angles to both other fingers. You now have the 3 coordinate directions of a 3D axis system. Now what does the mirror image look like? well, both thumbs point up, both middle fingers point in the same direction, but what about the forefinger? Yes, it is pointing back at you! You can actually replicate the mirror-image fingers with the other hand (don't drop the watch). If you bring both hands together now you will see that you can line up exactly an two fingers but the third one will be in the opposite direction. That's what a reflection does! It flips one of the coordinate axes.

Unfortunately even the science literature often refers to this as the right-handed and left-handed universes, which rather compounds the mental problem at the start. Better to think of it as a clockwise and anticlockwise universe. This is fundamental in theoretical physics as particle and antiparticle are ientical save for their spin. So if you try to step into the mirror you and your anti-self will disappear in a puff of quantum improbability!

enjoy

[Head Snake]

WHAT???

So what about pictures? Are they correct?

Maybe we should post some pictures and then their horizontal reverse and see if people can tell the difference. HINT: DO not include lettering or signs.

[pumpuiman]

the apparent left-right switch is a trick of the mind, a conceptual misunderstanding of what a mirror does. We humans are more or less symmetrical about the vertical axis. remove that symmetry for a moment and see what happens.

Yes.....as I posted earlier, our vertical symmetry allows the "trick" to happen.

Say you put on a watch, doesn't matter which hand, just to break the symmetry. Stare at the mirror and raise your 'watch hand'. Which hand is raised in the mirror? look carefully! Why do people think it is the opposite hand? Because we make a mental transformation. We think the mirror image is a real person and we try to put ourselves into that person's place. We do this by stepping into the mirror and turning around! Now try that mental excercise. Where is your watch hand? It is NOT in the same hand as the mirror image is it? That's the fundamental mistake our brain makes. A mirror does not present us with a real person.

This is what I was trying to explain with my "left, right, east, west scenario. By pointing with our hand to the east or west, not the right or left, no mental transformation takes place.

With your free hand point at yourself in the mirror, forefinger straight at you, thumb pointing upwards (like you're about to shoot yourself) and middle finger point inwards, at right angles to both other fingers. You now have the 3 coordinate directions of a 3D axis system. Now what does the mirror image look like? well, both thumbs point up, both middle fingers point in the same direction, but what about the forefinger? Yes, it is pointing back at you! You can actually replicate the mirror-image fingers with the other hand (don't drop the watch). If you bring both hands together now you will see that you can line up exactly an two fingers but the third one will be in the opposite direction. That's what a reflection does! It flips one of the coordinate axes.

This is the angle stuff I was pondering...the plane of the mirror must be perpendicular (parallel ?) to the axis affected.

Shouldn't it?

I'm still getting a headache

[Alf Witt]

OK, whatever fancy explanation you use there is still an anomaly between the left/right perception and the up/down perception.

Just to make it more bizarre, try this. You look in the mirror and left seems to be right, but up is still up and down is still down. Now lie on your side and hold up a bottle of beer (or whatever) in your left hand. It now looks as if it is in your right hand, yes? This is so even although your vertical image did not change when you were standing upright and looking in the mirror. OK so far? So what's going on? Also, according to your earlier experience of "left" when viewed in the mirror appearing to be "right" your head should now be at the opposite side of the mirror, but it isn't. Why?

[thatguy]

rychrde explains it well,

but simply, as already stated, the mirror simply reflects. That bottle of beer is still to YOUR right. It's still in YOUR right hand. You can't put yourself in the mirrors place, you are not really behind the mirror looking back

pictures,

a LENS does invert the image. A telescope will show things upside down (unless corrected, which results in a loss of light, and detail thru a second piece of glass.). I once saw Moshe Dyans' eye patch change sides in the same newspaper story. They must have flipped the negative for better composition.

flip a picture of yourself left to right in any photo editor, You'll se yourself as you do in a mirror