3 ms·
Exactly. And it is even easier to convince oneself that that's actually what is going on if instead of trying to explain why the mirror "flips" the image of a p
by rixed 6y ago
Exactly. And it is even easier to convince oneself that that's actually what is going on if instead of trying to explain why the mirror "flips" the image of a person, one try to explain why the mirror "flips" a written word.
Take a piece of paper, write a word onto it, and turn it towards the mirror. Now observe the word. Is it flipped left to right? If so, it's because when turning it towards the mirror _you_ turned it around the vertical axis. Do this again, this time rotating the paper around the horizontal axis and voilà, the word is now flipped upside down.
IIRC that's Feynman who have written somewhere that mirrors do not flip things right to left, nor top to bottom. They flip things front to back.
- unkulunkulu 6y agoI once got into a bar fight trying to explain this. I somehow got the idea that people who are used to write top-to-bottom might see it as flipping upside down. At the time I thought of Chinese letters being used that way, so while I was trying to tell about this to my friends a guy at the near table got really offended and went “you talking to me? You calling me chinese? Lets go outside!” It ended well :)