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?
what is essential is invisible to the eye -the fox
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
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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?
what is essential is invisible to the eye -the fox
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.
what is essential is invisible to the eye -the fox
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.”
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? : )
what is essential is invisible to the eye -the fox
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.
assuming you are wearing your aluminium foil poncho. why would you see silver reflected in the mirror?
what is essential is invisible to the eye -the fox
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.
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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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.
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?
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
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)
what is essential is invisible to the eye -the fox
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? 
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…
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.
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?
what is essential is invisible to the eye -the fox
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)
what is essential is invisible to the eye -the fox