A ridiculously simple question: How does a mirror work ?

reply to post by davespanners


1)cracks in concrete develop in time. The block is created first.

Because 6.8 billion other creators here, and your world interacts with theirs.

A mirror cannot truly be explained. Science is majority crappola. Just as their are an infinite number of numbers between 1 and 2. Mathematics yes crap when explaining with any real precision.

Originally posted by EnlightenUp
reply to post by afoolbyanyothername

 

You said it, "deceptively simple". Yet, conceptually it's not that complicated.

Basically, wave behavior as we normally understand it is an emergent statistical phenomenon. Light comes in packets (aka. corpuscles, photons), always. It's not the outmoded concept of wave-particle duality. Feynman made that clear about the synthesis of that dialectic in his lecture at the given address in the posts above.

So am I correct in my assumption that you DO understand the principle of reflection at the atomic level and whats happening when photons and electrons interact ?
Great !!! Finally someone able to supply an answer we'll be able to understand

What I find more fascinating is the human eye mirror.

We do not actually "see" the world as it is, we see it reversed and our brain changes that "image" of reality to make it work.

I always found that to be "cooler" than the discussion on sub atomic interactions.

Also, the propagation of waves through the slits demonstration.

So if i wear a set of eyeglasses that reverses the incoming photons, my brain will for a short period, see everything reversed. Yet when I take them off, the same thing occurs.

Could it all be "just" our perception of our reality? Naaa, someone at sometime will have a eureka moment and it will be so obvious that everyone will go, no duuuh.

reply to post by afoolbyanyothername


The man does a fine job himself without getting into complicated mathematics so why would you want it filtered through me? It will take more time than simply watching the video and thinking for yourself.

Feynman is the same one that demonstrated how the O-rings on the Challenger shuttle boosters failed to a bunch of politicians. If he can make a panel of dolts understand that, certainly he can assist you in forming an understanding of reflection, refraction and diffraction at the quantum level. You're smarter than those guys I presume.

He's absolutely madly brilliant in my humble opinion while also being entertaining. He's got quite an energy level himself.

Originally posted by EnlightenUp
reply to post by afoolbyanyothername

 

The man does a fine job himself without getting into complicated mathematics so why would you want it filtered through me? It will take more time than simply watching the video and thinking for yourself.

Hmmmm, I actually finished watching that entire Feynman vid just a short while ago after it was mentioned by someone in an earlier post.

... certainly he can assist you in forming an understanding of reflection, refraction and diffraction at the quantum level. You're smarter than those guys I presume.

I must have missed where he went into details at the quantum level
Through almost the entire section on reflection, where I was waiting for a deep down explanation at the atomic level as to how reflection works, I got zip. Through it all, he talks almost entirely about wave amplitudes and the time taken by a photon to travel from a source to a detector and not once did he explain the photon/electron interaction aspect of reflection.

reply to post by afoolbyanyothername


I think the next part was going to get into that aspect (he said it was about matter) and I plan on watching all of it. He goes through things step by step.

Some fine words by him:

Originally posted by EnlightenUp
reply to post by afoolbyanyothername

 

I think the next part was going to get into that aspect (he said it was about matter) and I plan on watching all of it. He goes through things step by step.

Could you please supply a link to the vid you're referring to ? I'd very much like to see/hear what he has to say about it and hopefully he goes into sufficient detail ... thanks.

Originally posted by tauristercus
Could you please supply a link to the vid you're referring to ? I'd very much like to see/hear what he has to say about it and hopefully he goes into sufficient detail ... thanks.

Sure, it looks like whatever they have there is at this higher level in the site:
Richard Feynman - Science Videos

Originally posted by SaturnFX
I remember reading something long ago saying we live in a creation universe...and that things are basically created on the fly from our own consciousness...

such as, during say, cavemen days, atoms simply didn't exist...not a wasn't discovered kinda thing, but actually didn't exist...nor did galaxies far away, etc...any of it...
Then as we decide something must be up there and started looking, things sort of popped into existance that we assumed should be there

Same with the small...the smaller we looked, the smaller things got...and it will infinately go so long as we keep expecting to find something...

The whole theory was, people...all people...are actually just manifestations of a single thing...lets call it God...and it is exploring itself and understanding itself through creation and comparative sizing of things...so, when we investigate something, we are actually creating something to investigate overall, just sort of ignorant to that fact...

it was a interesting theory anyhow...who knows...perhaps there is some truth to that...I would go on about quantum physics/ observed results altering results, etc...but you get the point.

I was watching larry King last night and it was about the brain and how little we understand. One part was about people who have phantom limb syndrome. Where they have lost a limb and experience pain in that limb. A treatment they use is with mirrors. They double refract a mirror and when you look at it the brain registers it as if your limb was still their. After that the pain goes away. I know this isn't about how a mirror works but more along the lines of human perception creating reality.

As far as how the mirror works I always thought that it had a lot to do with the atomic structure of the surface above the reflecting surface. More along the lines of energy storage in cystaline matrix structures

if a piece of mirror was placed into the LHC and atoms were revolving as fast as they can go! than mirror is placed in front of the moving atom, would it shatter the mirror? would it go right thru, or would it bounce off???


a mirror is glass with a thin coating of metal on the opposite side! thats how it works! duh!

Originally posted by ariel bender

The question i have is why mirrors flip left to right, so we have the "mirror image", but does not flip top to bottom...this makes no sense to me

Do you have a spoon?

This is how it works: when you look at a mirror, a ray of light containing a photographic hologram of your soul is sent out of your eyeball and at the mirror. When this ray hits the mirror, it activates a 5th dimensional reality on the other side, which absorbs the ray, decodes it, downloads your hologram and sends it back in time where it is displayed in real-time. The mirror displays the image upside-down by vibrating at super high frequency, which is detected by your ears and interpreted as an image in your brain. Sometimes a 2nd ray is accidentally absorbed by the mirror, which allows us to see ghosts, goblins, and other paranormal entities. The term "Magic Mirror on the Wall" is actually based in science reality; sometimes your brain accidentally sends your actual soul instead of a hologram, and you become stuck on the other side of the mirror; where you are forced to answer the vainest of questions from Queens and Princesses. In this rare event, the Matrix maintains a balance by destroying your body in a process known as spontaneous human combustion. In the animal kingdom, the Matrix maintains this balance by sending UFOs to mutilate cows and other farm animals. The crop circles are actually an inspection stamp left behind, to denote the Employee ID#s of the aliens working the current shift. I thought everyone knew this?

Originally posted by xiphias
This is how it works: when you look at a mirror, a ray of light containing a photographic hologram of your soul is sent out of your eyeball and at the mirror. When this ray hits the mirror, it activates a 5th dimensional reality on the other side, which absorbs the ray, decodes it, downloads your hologram and displays it on the mirror in real-time. The mirror displays the image upside-down by vibrating at super high frequency, which is detected by your ears and interpreted as an image in your brain. Sometimes a 2nd ray is accidentally absorbed by the mirror, which allows us to see ghosts, goblins, and other paranormal entities. The term "Magic Mirror on the Wall" is actually based in science reality; sometimes your brain accidentally sends your actual soul instead of a hologram, and you become stuck on the other side of the mirror; where you are forced to answer the vainest of questions from Queens and Princesses. In this rare event, The Matrix maintains a balance by destroying your body in a process known as spontaneous human combustion. I thought everyone knew this?

So .... essentially you're saying that you're completely clueless and ignorant to the physics that make reflections possible ? Why didn't you just come right out and admit it instead of wasting your time writing the drivel above ?

Originally posted by tauristercus
So .... essentially you're saying that you're completely clueless and ignorant to the physics that make reflections possible ? Why didn't you just come right out and admit it instead of wasting your time writing the drivel above ?

More or less. Sorry, just having some fun =P

I honestly have no clue, and your question is actually more profound than most would ponder.
What I wonder is if the process taking place on a mirror is the same as the process taking place in a puddle or fluid surface.

Originally posted by xiphias

Originally posted by tauristercus
So .... essentially you're saying that you're completely clueless and ignorant to the physics that make reflections possible ? Why didn't you just come right out and admit it instead of wasting your time writing the drivel above ?

More or less. Sorry, just having some fun =P

Ok, point taken Ok

I honestly have no clue, and your question is actually more profound than most would ponder.
What I wonder is if the process taking place on a mirror is the same as the process taking place in a puddle or fluid surface.

I would tend to assume that any material, be it a mirror, a puddle, highly polished metal, etc, that is capable of reflecting an image must be operating on the same principle down at the atomic/quantum level.

It just amazes me that we don't seem to have a complete explanation and description of how a photon manages to interact with such a material and have it's path reversed by 180 degrees. The fact that we do NOT have such a complete understanding of the processes involved indicates to me that there is something fundamentally missing or askew in our understanding of how the sub-atomic/quantum world works.

If you look at our existing technology and the wonders we've created, you'll find that a large proportion of it revolves around the interaction of electrons and photons e.g. lasers, plasma/lcd tv's, led's, ordinary light bulbs, etc and yet I don't think there's anyone out there (physicist) that has a complete understanding of how an electron is able to absorb a photon, store that absorbed energy for a period of time, then re-emit it as a photon. Essentially we can manipulate the gross effects without having a complete understanding of what is really going on at a deeper level.

at a guess reflection lol, I think refraction and light also plays a role.

oops. wrong thread. sorry..

www.ehow.com...
science.howstuffworks.com...

If it helps at all.

Double post

Originally posted by tauristercus

Now, how does this single atom perform this marvelous feat of reversing the photons path by exactly 180 degrees ?

That particular emitted photon may or may not be returned at 180º (assuming that 90º angle of incidence). That's exactly what Feynman explains. It's a matter of probabilities, some are and some aren't but the majority are. The probability is that the majority of photons are emitted at an angle equal to the angle of incidence. That majority composes the wave that leaves at 180º

You're asking for a simple answer to why or how. In quantum mechanics there is no such thing. Just gotta deal with it unless you want to go through the years of schooling required to "understand" it. I didn't, I don't. Not in detail but in concept.