I am standing 5 metres away from a mirror and looking at my reflection. Now imagine my eyesight (for whatever reason) cuts out any images further away than 5 metres would I be able to see myself? I mean, the light wouldn’t have to go past me, hit the mirror, hit me again to take my facing image back to the mirror then back to my eyes giving an image that’s 20 metres away would it? Would it? Or would it?
What if I was looking at an image 5 metres away through a periscope where the angled mirrors were a metre apart, would I see it?
When looking in a mirror, does my eyesight turn around on itself so I am actually looking out of the mirror at my actual person while getting the illusion that I am gazing at an image in a frame in front of me?
Yes. You are looking at light reflected from the surface of the mirror and not from the image.
No. Light is reflected off you to the mirror and back to your eyes.
You are looking at 2D. Hold a pencil out in front of you and then focus on the pencil. In the actual case when you do that you will notice that the background stuff gives you double images. Now stand in front of a mirror and hold the pencil out. Focus on the image of the pencil in the mirror, not on the actual pencil. You don’t see a double image of yourself in the background.
Ummm… yes, you do; a mirror works because it preserves the angular relationship between different rays of light; the lines of sight from each of your eyes (or if you prefer, the rays of light reaching them from the subject) remain separate, just the way they would if it wasn’t a mirror, but a window.
I just stood about 4 ft. in front of a mirror, again, held out a pencil and looked at its image which I placed directly on the image of my nose. No matter which eye I looked at it with, the pencil remained on the image of my nose.
Oops. Wait a minute. In the interest of science I got down on my knees so that I could line the water faucet spout image up with the image of my nose with one eye. When I then changed eyes the spout image moved. Getting down was not easy and getting up was even harder. I hope you guys appreciate my sacrifice.
I can now state pretty confidently that the mirror image is 3D.
The question is invalid because vision doesn’t radiate out from your eye, light goes into it. If you stated it a different way, such as you were in a universe where a photon went out of existence after travelling 5 meters then you can get an answer.
Here is how you test that theory. Close one eye and pick a small spot on the wall behind you and place your thumb on the mirror (literally touching the surface) so that the spot is obscured. Now, without lifting your thumb, can you move your eye so that you can now see the spot? If so, the image is three dimesional. This technique of “looking under your finger” works on true holograms (3D) and fails on photos (2D) so it can be used to detect real holograms from fakes.
I’ll give you a hint on the mirror technique. Due to its depth, just close the open eye and open he other one.
This is a contradiction, you’ve got it right the second time. The light hits the subject (you, after travelling whatever distance from the source), a lot of it bounces off you in all directions, some hits and bounces off the mirror at pretty much the angle of incidence, and a little bit of it makes it to your eye.
Yes but this is splitting hairs because of the point of the question.
If you’re standing 5 meters away from a mirror, incidentally, your image is 10 meters away, not 20. The part of the light’s path where it goes over your shoulder doesn’t matter.
The direction of photons (or sightons) doesn’t really matter, as long as they travel in straight lines and reflect off mirrors to preserve angle - ‘lines of sight’ or ‘rays of light’ - yes, one is wrong, but they both result in the same effects.
So the image travels 10 metres but it is also a distance of 5 metres away. So would I see my reflection?
If light goes in a straight lines then wouldnt it pick up 5 metres bouncing back from the mirror to pick up the image of my face, 5 metres to take it back to the mirror then 5m back out into my eyes giving a light distance of 15 metres? Would it happen like this if I were standing in a dark room with a laser with a diameter slightly wider than my head aimed at my head from behind?
If you’re standing 5 metres from a mirror, you’re seeing animage of yourself 10 metres away; the only thing you’re seeing that is five metres away is the frame of the mirror and any spots of dirt or scratches on its surface; the light doesn’t ‘know’ or care that it has been bounced off a mirror.
If it helps, you could think of the mirror as a window into another room; apart from the fact that the person in it copies you exactly, it behaves like a window into another room.
The light reflecting off your face is still confoounding the issue; duct tape a flashlight to the top of your head, pointing forwards; you’re standing in front of the mirror and you see the light from the flashlight on top of your reflection’s head - this light has travelled to the mirror and back; if the mirror is 5m away, it has travelled 10m from the flashlight to your eye. If photons vanished after travelling 5 metres, they would make it to the mirror, but not back to your eye and you would see nothing in the mirror
I’ve been in an optometrists office that was smaller than 8’ x 8’.
In order to test for nearsightedness (poor distant vision) he had a series of mirrors on the walls so when you were viewing an eye chart it was well over 20’ away visually.
I think you’re misinterpreting what the OP meant. To me he means that for some reason your eyes will not register photons that come from further away than 5 meters and not that the photons self-destruct after traveling 5 meters.
In the first case you will see the image. In the second case you won’t.
Are you trying to make this case based on the fact that the photons reflected from the mirror are not the same ones that were incident to it? That may be so, but unless there’s a vacuum between the mirror and your eye - and for that matter between your cornea and retina, they’re not the same photons in either case.
In either case, you won’t see the image, because the photons aren’t coming from the mirror, they’re coming from you (and, of course, not even starting there)
If sight was indeed radiative from your eye and had a range of 5 metres, you still wouldn’t see anything in the mirror, because the image isn’t on the mirror, it’s 5 metres behind it (‘behind’ just happens to be folded back the other way, that’s all).
No, it’s coming from 10 metres away, along a path that happens to be folded into two 5 metre lengths.
The same (pointless) argument could be made if you’re standing 100 metres from the mirror; i.e. I don’t care how the light traverses the first 95 metres; it’s coming to my eyes from 5 metres away - the last 5. In any case, since we’re postulating some magickal kind of light that behaves in non-standard ways, all bets are off as regards what happens when this non-standard light hits the mirror.
But the fact remains that the light reaching your eyes, enabling you to see yourself in a mirror is traversing a total path of 10 metres in doing so.
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