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mirrors don't flip images. Take a word written on a wall. Face it. point to the perpendicular wall on the side of the first letter. Now turn 180 degrees (imagin
by vrighter 3y ago
mirrors don't flip images. Take a word written on a wall. Face it. point to the perpendicular wall on the side of the first letter. Now turn 180 degrees (imagine there's a mirror there) and look at the mirror on the opposite wall. Do the same thing, point to the perpendicular wall on the side of the first letter of the word. You are now pointing at the exact same wall as last time. The mirror didn't reverse anything, it's you who's backwards.
- bandrami 3y agoFeynman talks about this in his "Symmetry" lecture, and how there's no way to discern "left" from "right" without a shared artifact. (You can try to get clever and use a magnet, but there's also no way to discern magnetic north from south without a shared artifact, so that's ultimately the same convention.) It's like how any complex number can only be a±bi; a+bi doesn't actually mean anything by itself.