What is Digg?116 Comments
- petiejoe, on 10/12/2007, -1/+7""Ever wonder why left and right are swaped in the mirror, but not up and down?"
It's because your eyes are on a horizontal plane rather than a vertical one. Imagine if you had one eye on your forehead and one on your nose. To your eyes, the image in the mirror would appear flipped up and down."
That would imply that a one-eyed person can't tell left from right or up from down. The problem is not that the mirror "flips" anything, but that our definition of "left" and "right" flip. When you face the mirror, "left" is 90 degrees counterclockwise from forward. When the mirror faces you, left is still 90 degrees counterclockwise from the way you are facing. The mirror, however, is not facing the same way you are facing.
Up, on the other hand, is the direction away from the ground. It doesn't matter which way you face, up is still the same direction. When was the last time you faced someone and told them to look up and they were confused whether you meant "your up" or "their up." Compare and contrast with the last time you told someone to look left. - inactive, on 10/12/2007, -0/+4The thing I hate about psychologists is they base their assumptions on results of not telling participants EXACTLY what to do. They give general instructions which can be taken in a variety of ways as to not give away what they are studying. This guy's study is bogus...
- ChrisF79, on 10/12/2007, -0/+3I know I have always been confused with mirrors. For one, I know that I'm far more handsome than the guy that stares back at me.
- alecks, on 10/12/2007, -0/+1Ever wonder why left and right are swaped in the mirror, but not up and down?
- patoruzu, on 10/12/2007, -0/+1The image is formed behind the mirror, at the same distance behind it as the subject is in front of it. So if you are 1 meter in front of the mirror, you see yourself as someone else would if they were standing 2 meters away from you.
It makes no sense to say "the size of the image is half the size of the observer". The size of the image is exactly the same as the size of the object. The *apparent* size, or angular size, of the image, depends on the distance (2 meters in the example above). The farther away you stand from the mirror, the smaller the apparent size of the image. That's just perspective.
What I find amazing is that these "researchers" are getting paid for this sort of nonsense. - foxhoundadmin, on 10/12/2007, -0/+1"anyone who has ever worked with lasers is already aware of the things mentioned in this article. also as long as you have above average intelligence and have a basic understanding of the way light works everything in this article is basically a "duh""
Yeah, sure. You forgot to mention a divine desire for the knowledge of how lasers work. I couldn't care less how they work. Not to mention, a solid understanding of intermediate physics. Sorry, but above average intelligence just doesn't cut it. Stop trying to make people feel stupid. - loneBoat, on 10/12/2007, -0/+1I thought mirrors were where I download stuff from when the main server is slow?
- yukevster, on 10/12/2007, -0/+1Link To the reports page...
http://www.liv.ac.uk/newsroom/press_releases/2005/12/mirrors.htm - tomee, on 10/12/2007, -0/+1What the? "They failed to recognise that the image on the surface of the mirror is half the size of the observer because a mirror is always halfway between the observer and the image that appears inside the mirror"????? This is complete bogus.
- zbeast, on 10/12/2007, -0/+1I tend to hiss and claw at images in mirrors.
- Otto, on 10/12/2007, -0/+1Sigh...
The correct answer is that mirrors don't swap left to right. They swap front to back. - saifrc, on 10/12/2007, -0/+1It's possible to simultaneously *understand* how a mirror works on an intellectual level, and still answer the questions wrong when picked for this study. It's all about how unintuitive mirrors are. It doesn't matter how intelligent you are, because it still requires conscious mental processing to answer the questions "correctly" -- the point is that mirrors defy our intition about space, because we look into the mirror world and *see* it as an extension of our own physical space, without being fully conscious of the fact that it's just a shiny surface.
Of course, none of this matters to me at all. I can't even see my own reflection in a mirror anyway. - WalterDirt, on 10/12/2007, -0/+1Since humans do not understand mirrors maybe we should ask a dog or a fish how they work.
- sho222, on 10/12/2007, -0/+1"Ever wonder why left and right are swapped in the mirror, but not up and down?"
For those of you eager to mock alecks for this question, realize that the very smart physicist Richard Feynman asks the same question as a mental exercise. I found a link to the question here: http://varatek.com/scott/feynman_problems.html - I'll leave it to you to find Feynman's answer. - ezkiel, on 10/12/2007, -0/+1were the guy who says something like:
"I for one welcome our new relfective overlords."
I was thinking they were refering to car mirrors. And I was like they are that tricky, if you align them right you can make ur blindspot small enough that part of the cars behind you are always visible.
I also can write backwards fairly easy. But if you can see someone in a mirro they can see you bottom line. - master_of_fm, on 10/12/2007, -0/+0http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mirror
this explains it all, it even has pictures for simple folk - master_of_fm, on 10/12/2007, -0/+0http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Specular_reflection
read this also - shawgo, on 10/12/2007, -0/+0wow, a lot of digg users don't know how a mirror works. That says a lot about digg.
And that story says a lot about people in general. - aeoo, on 10/12/2007, -0/+0Some humans still do not understand the difference between these two statements:
"People do not understand the effect of the mirror."
"People do not understand how the mirrors work."
There is a difference. Just because you are well familiar with the effect and can offer up predictive explanations, doesn't mean you know how it actually works.
When people misjudge the location from which their reflection will be visible, it is correct to say that people do not understand the effect of the mirror. - adrianguru, on 10/12/2007, -0/+0Ask Alice, or that rabbit she followed how they work.
- MrFisty, on 10/12/2007, -0/+0People are idiots. It's that simply. I mean simple.
- rEvolution27, on 10/12/2007, -0/+0I can't brush my hair infront the mirror.. I get so confused at the reversal of the image....
I also cant tell the distance my hand in relation to the front of back of my head...
Just goes to show how stupid I am - MrPhelps, on 10/12/2007, -0/+0Not really related to the article but .. the thing which confuses the most people about mirrors is that the common belief is that mirrors revert left and right. This is wrong, when you look at yourself in a mirror, your left hand is in front or your left hand, your right hand is in front of your right hand, your head is in front of your head, your feet are on front of your feet .... What is reversed is *back* and *front*.
- master_of_fm, on 10/12/2007, -0/+0"People don't understand what the acceleration lane is for on an interstate, OF COURSE they can't understand a mirror.
DUH."
- classic - Blitzenn, on 10/12/2007, -0/+0Ha Ha HA! After just reading an article on what they call a 'self-aware' robot, I am questioning now if it means anything. They say the robot is self-aware because it can determine if it's reflection in a mirror is it's own or an imposter. If you put that with this article, does that make it more than human?
- trogdoor, on 10/12/2007, -0/+0Those of you answering " a mirror doesn't flip anything " to the question of why right and left are flipped but not up and down. Your answer is correct but not very helpful so let me re-frase the question: If I hold a red ball up in my right hand and a blue ball down and in my left then look at my reflection why does the image I see appear to be that of a person, facing me, still holding the red ball up and the blue ball down but holding the red ball in his LEFT hand and the blue ball in the right? I do have an answer that may help some people and I will post it after I have figured out the correct wording.
- Sithlrd, on 10/12/2007, -0/+0People don't understand what the acceleration lane is for on an interstate, OF COURSE they can't understand a mirror.
DUH. - hardkoretom, on 10/12/2007, -0/+0mirrors arent just pieces of furniture that can be used to view yourself . In some beliefs, i think wicca, mirrors are also portals that people can use to hex or heal others kinda like the port numbers on computers can be used by people to gain access to your system. its not a stupid thing for people to wonder how a mirror work when there are many not known uses for it
- Speak, on 10/12/2007, -0/+0No digg, overgeneralized headline. In the end, this article is saying that there are people out there who don't understand how something works, which is something you can say about nearly everything. I could write an article "Humans Do Not Understand Flower Growth - Researcher" and see if people know how flowers grow, then say noone gets it because noone said "fractals" in their answer. Dumb study, dumb article, dumb digg.
- 808kick, on 10/12/2007, -0/+0This just in! Most people are idiots, I know at least 51% of Americans are...
- inactive, on 10/12/2007, -0/+0i guess that they must have questioned to dumbest people they could find for this one. imagine them looking at the mirror and trying to hit that person..... ouch
- Inbal, on 10/12/2007, -0/+0The research sucks, but I digg your comments. So many words to explain something so simple.
If there were people standing on the sky, then we would have a "your up or my up" problem, but since there is GRAVITY and we are all standing on the same ground, we always have the same up-and-down perspective. On the other hand, we are able to walk in different directions on this ground. If you read ALL the above comments and still don't understand - enter a room and walk to it's other end. If you entered from the right, you will now see the door to your left, and vice versa. Did the room flip? (the answer is: no)
And cyberfelon, let's distinguish Wiccans from attention-seeking, all-ages people who like to use religions to support their narrow-mindness. Like the difference between the room flipping and you flipping, OK? - foxhoundadmin, on 10/12/2007, -0/+0i suppose i'm in the group of people who don't know how grammar or spelling works; but wait! i corrected myself. oh happy day! then, i suppose the people who say other people are in the group of people who don't know how grammar or spelling works are in the group of people who don't understand how typos work. comprende, or did i miss a comma or two?
- rohcky, on 10/12/2007, -0/+0Mirrors are surfaces that are almost flawless so that they reflect ~100% of light directly back to you exactly the way it traveled to the surface. If you hold up your left hand with thumb facing in towards your body, it'll reflect that exact image. No such thing as flipping.
- Chongo, on 10/12/2007, -0/+0duhhhhhh this isn't tech.....duhhhhhhh
I'm so surprised that no one wrote that so I had to throw that one out there.
+digg - Vladek, on 10/12/2007, -0/+0>> Ever wonder why left and right are swapped in the mirror, but not up and down?
> It's because of YOUR symmetry - not the mirror's.
The 1957 Nobel prize in Physics was award for the discovery of parity violation (mirror asymmetry).
It doesn't surprise me that regular folks don't really understand mirrors. - Eaglefire, on 10/12/2007, -0/+0Oops, posted too soon.
Mirrors don't flip left/right or up/down but they do flip near/far. Moving your hand away from you toward the mirror makes the mirror hand move toward you.
The reason text appears backwards is that instead of rotating the text to face you (as you would without a mirror and the text facing away) it flips the depth axis to show you the text without rotating it back toward you. Thus you see what's flipped around because the text is rotated 180 degrees from the position which would let you read it properly. - foxhoundadmin, on 10/12/2007, -0/+0"*They are 100% correct only if they placed the mirror at the correct position during their test. But the image's head size isn't always exactly half of your head."
...but what's half of infinity, or half of the threshold of human vision? j/k. i mean, there'd have to be something in the background; but that's to be expected. then, you'd have to be half way in between the foremost part of the background and the surface of the mirror. i get it. they get it. i just want to know why scientists can't say what they mean--why they can't explain what they know. meh. scientists aren't good with words. i suppose they're thoughts are too complex. i'm that way too...sometimes. - Refrag, on 10/12/2007, -0/+0foxhoundadmin, these weren't scientists, they were psychologists.
- Eaglefire, on 10/12/2007, -0/+0Put your hand on a mirror. Does the mirror flip your thumb so that it does not line up with your real thumb?
Mirrors don't flip left/right or up/down but they do flip near/far. Moving your hand away from you toward the mirror makes the mirror hand move toward you.
The reason text appears backwards is that instead of rotating the text to face you (as you would without a mirror and the text facing away) it flips the depth axis to show you the text without rotating it back toward you. Thus you see what's flipped around because the text is rotated 180 degrees from the position which would let you read it properly. - foxhoundadmin, on 10/12/2007, -0/+0*their
- dnaspydir, on 10/12/2007, -0/+0Refrag - it doesn't matter how long my arms are... the mirror will flip the distance ;-)
- inactive, on 10/12/2007, -0/+0yeah descent study.. i am sure with the picture of venus a lot of people got it wrong but then again most people are idiots anyway and it doesn't really surprise me. Too bad who ever reported this story didn't word it well. I am sure were the participants were asked to stand, their heads would be half size. But since they are wrong it lessens the impact of their study.
- foxhoundadmin, on 10/12/2007, -0/+0lol refrag. if that was a joke, then it was a good one.
- foxhoundadmin, on 10/12/2007, -0/+0mirrors don't flip anything. people can see you if you can see their eyes in a mirror. objects in mirror are closer than they appear, because apparent distance and size of objects are measured by their sizes relative to each other, i.e., car and mirror.
- Refrag, on 10/12/2007, -0/+0dnaspydir, that depends on how long your arms are.
- foxhoundadmin, on 10/12/2007, -0/+0""Yeah, sure. You forgot to mention a divine desire for the knowledge of how lasers work. I couldn't care less how they work. Not to mention, a solid understanding of intermediate physics. Sorry, but above average intelligence just doesn't cut it. Stop trying to make people feel stupid." - foxhoundadmin
you are lame"
nice one. i think you just proved my point for me. thanks! :) - master_of_fm, on 10/12/2007, -0/+0mirrors are the DEVIL!!!
- aronoff, on 10/12/2007, -0/+0Humans Do Not Understand Mirror Reflections - the name of my new album
- MrMysterious, on 10/12/2007, -0/+0Mirrors are hightech.
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