I don't get mirrors. -or- The lost art...

[TastesLikeChicken]

lol it is flipped. See this pic:

The text "Ambulance" is reversed so that the rear view mirror can reverse it again and you can read it in your rear view mirror. The mirror is magic! :biggrin:

The mirror doesn't flip anything. It is reproducing an image, in this case, of what is behind you and placing it in front of you.

Look at it this way. Imagine that you can lift those letters off of the ambulance. Sit directly in front of the ambulance with your back to it. Now lift those letters up over your head and in front of you. They are no longer reversed.

It's not magic.

 

[disappoint]

The mirror doesn't flip anything. It is reproducing an image, in this case, of what is behind you and placing it in front of you.

Look at it this way. Imagine that you can lift those letters off of the ambulance. Sit directly in front of the ambulance with your back to it. Now lift those letters up over your head and in front of you. They are no longer reversed.

It's not magic.

How the heck are you lifting those letters off of there? Magic? You're just imagining being able to do that! The mirror really can!

 

[Schmide]

No. Your brain isn't flipping the image. The mirror does that.

Take a picture of the mirror with a camera. Print out the photo. Now look at the photo. You are no longer looking at a mirror yet the image is still a mirror image. Did your camera's "brain" work like yours and flip the image? NO. The mirror did that!

Optically, your eye works just like a camera, the image is flipped both horizontally and vertically. Your brain just like the display of the camera transforms the image into your perceived projection plane.

 

[disappoint]

Optically, your eye works just like a camera, the image is flipped both horizontally and vertically. Your brain just like the display of the camera transforms the image into your perceived projection plane.

The image is not flipped vertically. Just horizontally. Which is why ambulance painters flip the letters horizontally but not vertically.

 

[Matthiasa]

No. Your brain isn't flipping the image. The mirror does that.

Take a picture of the mirror with a camera. Print out the photo. Now look at the photo. You are no longer looking at a mirror yet the image is still a mirror image. Did your camera's "brain" work like yours and flip the image? NO. The mirror did that!

My comment
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Explanation:
Eyes are like lenses, what you see is a real image and real images are flipped. The reason why you don't see everything upside down is because as an infant your brain flipped the image to match what it was experiencing. Newborns really do see the world flipped.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Real_image
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Perceptual_adaptation
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To far down to actually represent to scale
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Your head