This article talks about a big question car companies, manufacturers and other critics have had for years: Why do cars have a plane (flat) mirror on the driver side while the passenger side has a convex mirror? Looking at a plane mirror on the driver's spot is really easy, since the focal lengths all remain the same. But some have a problem with the passenger's mirror. Many argue that it is difficult or even dangerous to have to change your focus to adjust on how the mirror on the passenger side shows objects smaller and closer, but a University of Michigan study in 1996 proves that it is more beneficial. However, only baby steps have been taken to allow convex mirrors on the driver's side, leaving some car manufacturing companies distressed, while others happy.
There are many factors that influence how well an object will be reflected. The lighter the surface, the better the reflection. Likewise, the texture of the surface will also influence the quality of the reflection. The smoother the surface, the better the reflection.
This article talks about why it is still hard for many people to understand how a mirror reflects. Many people are still confused and fascinated at what mirrors can do. This article explains many weird things about mirrors and misconceptions that people have.
This article talks about how German chemist Justus Von Liebig invented mirrors in 1835. He did this by taking a thin layer of silver in a metallic state and aligning it with one side of clear glass. This process enabled the invention of the mirror. This was the basis of the first mirror and this caused a gigantic production of mirrors in the future years.
This article explains that the reason the passenger side mirror's objects are closer than they appear is because the mirror is convex and since the passenger side mirror is so far from the driver, it is used to give a large enough field of view at the cost of the images being slightly distorted.
When we see a word in the mirror, it is backwards. For this reason, ambulance trucks have the word "ambulance" written backwards so you you can read it properly by looking into your mirror. The original point is the same distance from the mirror as the reflected point is from the mirror.
Turns out, some retail clothing stores manipulate their mirrors to make the customers believe they’re slimmer and taller in their clothing items.
Called the “Skinny Mirror,” the misleading reflection can actually boost retail sales by up to eighteen percent. Making the customer’s reflection appear a subtle five to ten pounds thinner, they’re convinced that the clothing pieces are flattering, leading to purchases.
Though originally created to encourage body satisfaction, there is definitely some controversy surrounding the product.
This article is about scientists producing fractal light from lasers. Fractals are a very common pattern found in nature. The way they have done it is laser light cycles bounce between mirrors and repeat light onto itself which mimics the pattern. The laser had to be very precise in order for it to be observed. In the future they are hoping to develop custom-made lasers able to produce fractal designs on demand.
Plane mirrors have been around for along time. People used to polish obsidian to use as a mirror. The the Greeks and Romans started polishing bronze. Now mirrors have a fine layer of silver on the back. This was invented by a German chemist named Justus Van Liebig.
For many industries, plane mirrors are used for different purposes. In the fashion industry, they are used to see your reflection of what you want to buy. In the entertainment industry, Carnivals like to use plane mirrors to make a "House of mirrors", so everywhere you turn, you will only see your reflection, which makes it very difficult to navigate the way out.
This article talks about a theory made by Albert Einstein years ago, where he stated that a beam of light interacting with a mirror moving towards it close to the speed of light would shift its wavelength into in extreme ultraviolet part of the spectrum. Around 100 years later this year, his theory had finally been proven using a plasma mirror and xenon gas, able to produce attosecond light flashes (one quintillionth of a second)! Knowing that scientists back then without the technology could still make these amazing inferences and hypotheses is completely incredible.
This article describes an interesting application for mirrors. A Norweign town by the name of Rjukan uses a 6,500 square foot array of mirrors mounted on a mountain to reflect light into the town, which goes without sun light for almost half the year. It cost over $750,000. However, it is extremely high-tech and can change the orientation of the mirrors throughout the day to maximize the amount of sunlight that is reflected to the town.
The ordinary mirrors we see everyday usually make us see images that are laterally inverted, but when handled in certain ways, they can also produce non-flipped images: connecting two mirrors together in a 90 degree angle, for example. There will be three images of an object in this type of mirror, but the middle image will appear just like how people standing in front of the object in the location of the mirror would see it as. This is because the rays of the object, when reflected off of one mirror, became the incident ray of the other mirror. The image, in turn, was produced by the eyes extrapolating the direction of the reflection rays coming from the second mirror instead of the first, and this creates an image that is the laterally inverted image of the first mirror, making it non-laterally inverted.
Researchers at Duke University have constructed a "meta-mirror" device capable of perfectly reflecting sound waves in any direction. In an everyday mirror, the light follows the Law of Reflection: the light must bounce off of it at the same angle that it came in at, the researchers wanted to see if they could instead send a wave off in a different direction. To break the law of reflection with sound waves, the researchers had to engineer a device that could precisely control amplitude and speed throughout the entire wave sounds.