• Question: How come words appear backwards in the mirror ?

    Asked by Deeps 2005 to Chris, Hayley, Jimi on 17 Mar 2016.
    • Photo: Jimi Wills

      Jimi Wills answered on 17 Mar 2016:

      Or upside-down, depending on where the mirror is.

      It’s because the light crosses at the mirror…

      If you have some writing on the left, and a mirror on the right, and you angle them at right-angles to eachother and 45 degrees from your eyes….

      view from top:

      / mirror
      ———————————-0 your eyes
      \ writing on paper

      then the writing on the left of the page is closest to you and bounces off the part of the mirror that’s closest to you – the right of the mirror. The writing on the right of the pages is furthest away from you and bounces off the part of the mirror that’s furthest away from you.. the left. So left and right have become swapped!

      or the other way round… paper on the right, mirror on the left:

      ##/=======\ left of paper
      #/ | |
      /===========\ right of paper
      | | | |
      | | | |
      R – L

    • Photo: Hayley Moulding

      Hayley Moulding answered on 17 Mar 2016:

      Let’s look at the letter ‘E’. The E is pointing right, right?!!! The three arms are going towards the right hand side of this screen. If we then flipped it so the E went the other way like… -] … the arms are facing the left of the screen. The arms of the E are the other way! Light doesn’t bounce off a mirror like a ball bounces off a wall, a mirror absorbs some of the light and gives it back out. The light hits the mirror and the light is absorbed into the mirror!! What happens as the mirror absorbs some of the light, then it throws it back out at the same speed. So what happens is we see it the other way round because the light is coming back at us. It is very difficult to explain!!!

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