why do we think of mirrors as silver?

[Kilgore Trout]

if you are like me, when you picture a mirror, you think of it as silver. even when you are looking at a mirror it can appear to be silver.

but obviously, it isn't. for example, the mirror i am looking at now:

i see some red.
there is green... white... blue... etc.

but i will still see it as silver. why?

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*what is essential is invisible to the eye -the fox*

[The LION]

This link has a good discription of how a mirror is made and why it appears silver.
http://www.britannica.com/bcom/eb/article/9/0,5716,54269+1,00.html

Peace
t lion

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[Kilgore Trout]

i admit i didn't read the article very thoroughly, but i don't think it explains why it looks silver, yet doesn't.

yes, it says that it is backed with silver or aluminium. sure, i knew that.

but... say you are looking in a mirror that has a reflection of a red square. if you look at it, it will look as red as the original square. (maybe i slight difference, but that's not what i'm talking about here).

so why then does the mirror, with all those seemingly true reds and blues and greens, seem silver?

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*what is essential is invisible to the eye -the fox*

[Kilgore Trout]

a friend just suggested that you could just be seeing the silver behind the reflection, just as you would see both your reflection and what is outside, when looking through a window.

this makes sense, but when you see a reflection in a window, the colours aren't as accurate and full in saturation.

for instance, if i shot (video) an image in a mirror, you wouldn't be able to tell it's a reflection until i gave some reference.

but once you know it's a mirror, it seems silver again.

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*what is essential is invisible to the eye -the fox*

[scr4]

Because silver IS a mirror. A polished silver surface has very high reflectivity, and it reflects all colors equally well. So does a mirror. So silver looks like a mirror. Or, a mirror looks like silver.

Actually, since ordinary silver objects are more likely to have curves and defects than a manufactured mirror, silver exaggerates the qualities of a mirror. This is probably why you're more likely to say "a mirror looks like silver" than "silver looks like a mirror."

[Kilgore Trout]

you seem to be missing the question.

go look in a mirror. you see yourself.
you see yourself in colours that are true.
if you are wearing a red hat, you see that exact colour in the mirror. and the rest of the image is made up of exact copies of the colours in the 'real world'.

but why does the mirror seem silver, and the 'real world' doesn't, if the colours are equal in hue and saturation?

and why am i saying mirrors, and not leaks? : )

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*what is essential is invisible to the eye -the fox*

[Patty O'Furniture]

I have never thought of a mirror as being any color. When I look into it I see whatever colors are reflected, which almost never includes silver unless I am wearing my apollo 11 space suit or my aluminum foil poncho.

If somebody asked me what color a mirror was I would look at them as though they had just asked permission to put their finger in my nose.

[Kilgore Trout]

assuming you are wearing your aluminium foil poncho. why would you see silver reflected in the mirror?

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*what is essential is invisible to the eye -the fox*

[Patty O'Furniture]

Oh now you've got me thinking. You'll pay for that. I guess since the foil is sort of crinkly and scatters light at random angles rather than neatly aligned like a mirror would. The nearest analogy I can think of is that regular incandesent light is composed of many wavelengths at various phase relationships, where as laser light is a single wavelength of a single coherent phase.

My car is also silver but it's a dull non-reflective color so I see [whatever combination of colors make up] silver bouncing off of it. It's not shiny enough to see an image in so I call it silver colored. If it were polished sufficiently that I could see a perfect reflection in it, I would certainly think hard before answering the question "what color is it?"

My brain hurts now.

[BigRoryG]

I must thank you good sir. You have opened my mind. Plus, I think I know what you';re talking about. Part of it has to do with the fact that the image is slightly silvery for a couple of reasons. One, unlike refraction, reflection is never perfect. some of the light is absorbed into the silver. Also, because of some small defects,the reflection is even more imperect. This should give everything a slight silver tint. If you look into a mirror made of bronze, everything looks really bronzy, because the mirror is not reflecting allt he light, it's absorbing some. Also, it's partly psychological. you know the mirror is made of silver, and therefore think it's sliver.

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"C'mon, it's not even tomorrow yet..." - Rupert

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[Kilgore Trout]

I would certainly think hard before answering the question "what color is it?"

and then your answer would be?
:)


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*what is essential is invisible to the eye -the fox*

[Patty O'Furniture]

Shiny.

I move that we nominate "Mirror" as an official color and that from this point on it be added to the Crayola Big Box O' 64 Crayons.

[Nickrz]

I suddenly have an inordinate desire to build an aluminum pup tent, put my finger up Opus' nose, and do it all while gazing into a Baby Moon hubcap. Is there a name for that?

[handy]

Let's all chew aluminum foil instead.

What color you see, assuming you aren't on LSD, depends on what the room lights are and whether that mirror glass prisms light into colors.

Just think all the time you see your body in the mirror you are seeing a reverse of what everyone actually sees you as....sigh

[Kilgore Trout]

agreed that what you see in the mirror depends on the lighting in the room.
but that lighting effects the 'real world' as well.
what i am saying is this... say you take a colour sample (via digital camera, etc.) of your red hat and put it into your computer. then you take a sample of your hat's reflected colour and input it just the same. the colours would be remarkably similar. any change is slight, and is irrelevant to what i'm asking.

so then why when i picture a mirror, or even look at a mirror as a whole, do i see it as silver? it is not really silver. it is (depending on what's in the room) red and blue and green etc.

(i wish i could ask this clearly)

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*what is essential is invisible to the eye -the fox*

[voltaire]

so then why when i picture a mirror, or even look at a mirror as a whole, do i see it as
silver? it is not really silver. it is (depending on what's in the room) red and blue and green etc.


Because it is silver. True silver is highly reflective. Your mirror is highly reflective. You have been conditioned to use the word 'silver' to describe things that are highly reflective. We also sometimes use the word silver to describe something that is gray with little sparkles in them (such as cars), giving the reflective appearance of silver, but without the same amount of reflection. This isn't "true" silver, but its close enough.

If I show you a sterling silver teapot, and ask you what color it is, you'll say silver. You'll say this even though you see many different reflected colors on the surface of the teapot. Otherwise, you would have to list off all the colors that you see reflected, and that would get very tedious.

Now, the true question is: What rhymes with silver? :)

[handy]

liver.

I don't really see what the big question is as a mirror is just a piece of glass with silver on the back...

[techchick68]

What color is the mercury in your thermometer (the one you place under your tongue to take your temp?)

It's silver!

Years ago, mirrors were made of a mercury based material. Today I don't know what they are made of, but according to my father those mirrors in your antique furniture are made of mercury.

Now, that said, if you look at the back of even a modern day mirror, it is silver in color or grey. The polishing of the surface is what gives it it's reflective nature. If you were to remove the glass and rough up the thin layer of the coating, it would be silver. Thereby leading me to believe that the color is silver even if it reflects the true color of what you're wearing.

Does that help? Don't know and it probably doesn't matter, but that's my view of this topic.

[Kilgore Trout]

hmmm...
what would one mirror reflecting another mirror look like? what colour would it be?
i'm sure this is answerable with math, but shucks, i wouldn't know how to do it.

| | those are the 2 mirrors facing each other.

|<--| if (<--) was your view, what would you see? colour?

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*what is essential is invisible to the eye -the fox*

[Kilgore Trout]

yikes. that looks confusing.

| |
the 2 mirrors facing each other.

|<--|
<-- is your view. what would you see? colour? (assuming your fat head doesn't exist)

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*what is essential is invisible to the eye -the fox*

[Konrad]

Maybe it's because not all the light hitting a mirror is relfected so the image in the mirror looks darker. This could make it look as if we are looking into another room through silver-tinted glass.

[handy]

Wow, something from the 70's! Two mirrors facing each other would see each other to infinity. Pretty cool to see, too.

[Stephen]

Perhaps it's an occupational hazard, but when I see two mirrors parallel to each other, I see a resonator ;)

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[Kilgore Trout]

Wow, something from the 70's! Two mirrors facing each other would see each other to infinity. Pretty cool to see, too.

would it also not be pretty impossible to see?

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*what is essential is invisible to the eye -the fox*

[Patty O'Furniture]

Impossible, yes. Because (1) your fat head is in the way, (2) the mirrors could never be perfectly flat & perfectly aligned, and (3) light doesn't travel infinitely fast.

This is paraphrased from Carl Sagan's discussion of the concept of infinity in the series Cosmos.

[GuanoLad]

Voltaire is right. Silver isn't a colour, it's reflectivity. If something is reflecting, it not only makes us think 'silver' but it has to be silver. Any other coloured metal would reflect that colour additionally, but silver reflects white light, which is what standard sunlight is.

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[handy]

opus, What would Sagan know?

To make an 'infinity' mirror. Get a box put a regular mirror on the bottom, put some little lights around the inside wall and for the top get some smoke glass thats reflective when light hits it [like beach houses have], point reflective side to the other mirror. Youlook thru the top with lights on and you see them reflect to 'infinity..'

Same thing happened the other day when I looked at a mirror in a store window at night and the window glass reflected it back so it just went on forever.

[Kilgore Trout]

but silver reflects white light, which is what standard sunlight is.

'standard' sunlight? i wouldn't know what that is. but sunlight is *usually* around 5600ºk.

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*what is essential is invisible to the eye -the fox*

[handy]

Umm Im pretty sure light is colorless.

[GuanoLad]

I was going to say 'standard lights' but changed my mind halfway through. Okay? I think everyone seems to be thinking about this in so many different ways that a concensus won't be reached.

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Hero For A New Millennium!

The Legend Of PigeonMan (http://www.hotkey.net.au/~guanolad/pigeonman/) - updates every Wed & Sat. If I can be bothered.

[Kilgore Trout]

Umm Im pretty sure light is colorless.

light is far from colourless.
if only that were the case, my job would be much easier.


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*what is essential is invisible to the eye -the fox*

[OpalCat]

Is handy being intentionally dense in this thread, or does he really just not understand the questions being asked?

Here is my best attempt at a way to see the two mirrors: scratch a TINY hole in the coating of one mirror and put a camera behind it.

Here is my guess as to why mirrors look silver... most houses/buildings interiors are white or offwhite or some other similarly light color.. so MOST of the reflection in MOST of the mirrors we encounter is some sort of off-white, probably a little darker than the real thing. In other words, some form of grey. Which is kinda like silver.

GOod question though... that is just a guess as to the answer.

I don't think handy understands the concept we're discussing. He seems to think that his revelation that the mirror is silver-coated glass in some way answers the query.

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[handy]

OpalCat, not at all. My point is: 1. 'Light' does not have a set scientific definition. It's a wave or a particle, or both? 2. You cannot see 'light' itself but you see light reflecting off surfaces. 3. Everyone's eyes detect light in their own way. Thus, eyes, lighting, surfaces mean there can be NO set answer to the persons' query.

That's why, as an artist, I know everyone would do a picture of the mirror in their own way.

[Kilgore Trout]

[quote[That's why, as an artist, I know everyone would do a picture of the mirror in their own way.[/quote]

aside from the specific topic: surely as an artist you have heard of the Kelvin scale of light colour temperature.
you say light is colourless. that is far from true.

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*what is essential is invisible to the eye -the fox*

[Finagle]

Get one of the 3D modeling programs that let you apply textures to materials. You can fiddle with things like reflectance, surface texture, and so on. Metallic surfaces tend to have high reflectivity and smooth surfaces. Silver doesn't impart much of a color change like gold or copper would. So when you look at a mirror, you say "Hey, this has the same properties as something silver would."

It wouldn't surprise me if you were also, possibly unconsciously, paying attention to some of the artifacts of the mirror that make it a non-perfect reflector -- ghost images from the front surface, finger prints, some non-neutrality in the color transmission, and some loss of light intensity. This would give you a cue that you were looking at a reflector and not the actual image.

[handy]

Kilgore, if electromagnetic radiation is not colourless, then it must be a particle, right?

[Zyada]

I'm going to second (third, fourth, whatever) the opinion that silver is one of the reflective "colors", along with gold & copper. The mirror, being completely reflective, represents what we would consider the "ideal silver". Also, silver, like a normal mirror, does not distort the colors it reflects. If you see an amber-tinted mirror, you will probably think of it as "gold".

In addition, you have probably seen a mirror that is corroding. At the edges of the corrosion, the mirroring turns grey before it turns black or disappears. This enhances the perception that the mirror is silver-colored.

One more thing: when we look at a reflective object, we are able to perceive that the colors that are being reflected originate from outside the object. Our minds, in seeking to assign a color property to the visual aspect of the object itself, attaches the term silver to the object for the previously mentioned reasons. This is an interesting capability of the human mind to translate our perceptions based on other perceptions; for instance, if you are in a room which is lit with red light, you will be aware that although everything looks red, most objects are not red.

For another interesting discussion on the color of mirrors, look here: http://www.straightdope.com/ubb/Forum3/HTML/001233.html