physorg.com— Psychologists at the University of Liverpool have found that people are still find unable to comprehend how mirrors work..... interesting study report..
Dec 21, 2005View in Crawl 4
The 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?
i 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
Oh, lordy, people.You know, there are two sides of science, and there's way too much of the theoretical side going on in this thread and far too little of the experimental side of the equation. It's one thing to speculate about the size of the image of your head in the mirror, but it's quite another thing to actually *check your answer*.I did just that:1) I started with the assumption that the researcher's answer is correct: that the image of your head will ALWAYS be precisely 1/2 the size of your head (head's up, rnelsonee ).2) I then took a black magic marker and a 36 inch measuring stick (yardstick), and drew two thick lines on the mirror 18 inches apart (i.e., the right hand side of one thick line was 18 inches away from the right hand side of the other thick line - I knew precisely where to measure 18 inches.3) I then grasped the yardstick at roughly the 6 and the 30 inch marks with my hands (holding it horizontally to match the marks on the mirror), then pressed it against my forehead with the 18-inch mark (the center of the yardstick) directly above my right eye.4) I then closed my left eye (to elimate errors due to stereoscopic depth perception), and attempted to line up the ends of the image of the yardstick with the lines which I had drawn on the mirror.RESULTS:A) The image did NOT change size depending upon how far I was from the mirror. It was never smaller, nor bigger. The researcher is right that the size is ALWAYS the same, no matter where you are in relation to the mirror.Note to rnelsonee: Yes, if you stand further from the mirror, the image of your head will shrink; that is, it'll take up less area in your field of vision. *But so does the mirror itself* (and, in the case of this experiment, so does the 18 inch gap between the marks that I wrote on the mirror). The mirror, and images in the mirror, grow and shrink (relative to the size of your field of vision) at the same rate as you move closer or further from the mirror.B) The length of the image of the yardstick was pretty darned close to the 18 inch distance between the two marks - but not exactly. I used various methods to allow me to hold perfectly still, and as best as I could measure, the image of the yardstick in the mirror was always between 19 and 20 inches (and, obviously, that's true for no matter where I was standing in relation to the mirror, close or far away).So why the discrepancy? Why didn't I get exactly 18 inches? The answer is that my forehead is slightly forward of my eye. Plus, there's the thickness of the yardstick to take into consideration. AND, the place in the eye where the yardstick would have had to line up with to get the 18 inch measurement may be at the front of the eye in the center of the lens, or it may be in the back of the eye where the inverted image is projected to be read by the nerves, or it may be somewhere in between. But, the point is, the yardstick, when pressed to my forehead, is somewhat in front of where it would have to be in order to measure the correct length as 18 inches. (If I held it out in front of me at arms length, it'd appear much longer than the distance between those two marks on the mirror.)See milkfat's answer, above, about the overhead projector transparency for the best insights on the right-left vs up-down issue (in my humble judgment).
loneboatDec 21, 2005
I thought mirrors were where I download stuff from when the main server is slow?
dnaspydirDec 21, 2005
Refrag - it doesn't matter how long my arms are... the mirror will flip the distance ;-)
gavinDec 21, 2005
wha, how can you understand that you dont understand?
master_of_fmDec 22, 2005
<a class="user" href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mirror">http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mirror</a>this explains it all, it even has pictures for simple folk
master_of_fmDec 22, 2005
<a class="user" href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Specular_reflection">http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Specular_reflection</a>read this also
inbalDec 22, 2005
The 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?
Closed AccountDec 22, 2005
i 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
ixtlanJan 10, 2006
Oh, lordy, people.You know, there are two sides of science, and there's way too much of the theoretical side going on in this thread and far too little of the experimental side of the equation. It's one thing to speculate about the size of the image of your head in the mirror, but it's quite another thing to actually *check your answer*.I did just that:1) I started with the assumption that the researcher's answer is correct: that the image of your head will ALWAYS be precisely 1/2 the size of your head (head's up, rnelsonee ).2) I then took a black magic marker and a 36 inch measuring stick (yardstick), and drew two thick lines on the mirror 18 inches apart (i.e., the right hand side of one thick line was 18 inches away from the right hand side of the other thick line - I knew precisely where to measure 18 inches.3) I then grasped the yardstick at roughly the 6 and the 30 inch marks with my hands (holding it horizontally to match the marks on the mirror), then pressed it against my forehead with the 18-inch mark (the center of the yardstick) directly above my right eye.4) I then closed my left eye (to elimate errors due to stereoscopic depth perception), and attempted to line up the ends of the image of the yardstick with the lines which I had drawn on the mirror.RESULTS:A) The image did NOT change size depending upon how far I was from the mirror. It was never smaller, nor bigger. The researcher is right that the size is ALWAYS the same, no matter where you are in relation to the mirror.Note to rnelsonee: Yes, if you stand further from the mirror, the image of your head will shrink; that is, it'll take up less area in your field of vision. *But so does the mirror itself* (and, in the case of this experiment, so does the 18 inch gap between the marks that I wrote on the mirror). The mirror, and images in the mirror, grow and shrink (relative to the size of your field of vision) at the same rate as you move closer or further from the mirror.B) The length of the image of the yardstick was pretty darned close to the 18 inch distance between the two marks - but not exactly. I used various methods to allow me to hold perfectly still, and as best as I could measure, the image of the yardstick in the mirror was always between 19 and 20 inches (and, obviously, that's true for no matter where I was standing in relation to the mirror, close or far away).So why the discrepancy? Why didn't I get exactly 18 inches? The answer is that my forehead is slightly forward of my eye. Plus, there's the thickness of the yardstick to take into consideration. AND, the place in the eye where the yardstick would have had to line up with to get the 18 inch measurement may be at the front of the eye in the center of the lens, or it may be in the back of the eye where the inverted image is projected to be read by the nerves, or it may be somewhere in between. But, the point is, the yardstick, when pressed to my forehead, is somewhat in front of where it would have to be in order to measure the correct length as 18 inches. (If I held it out in front of me at arms length, it'd appear much longer than the distance between those two marks on the mirror.)See milkfat's answer, above, about the overhead projector transparency for the best insights on the right-left vs up-down issue (in my humble judgment).