Write the word CHOICE in clear capital letters on a piece of paper and look at it in the mirror. Then slowly turn the paper through 180 degrees. OK find that interesting? Now explain to me why the mirror shows things in reverse but doesn't swap up for down and show your feet at the top and your head at the bottom. Try lying down in front of a mirror and turning your body like you turned the piece of paper 180 degrees (or just tip your head 90 degrees in front of the mirror). Can anyone explain exactly how this works? (sorry I though I would take a break from quantum physics today!!!)
Saturday science
by ball. 4 Replies latest jw friends
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ball.
ok, I'll stick with quantum physics
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Carmel
...hey, no problem doing the writin on paper thingy, but wifey is thinkin I am going looney rolling on the floor in the bathroom in front of the mirror...Oh! guess I should get dressed and get on with breakfast...
carmel, ready for the weekend
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rem
The only reason the reflection seems strange to us is because of our bilateral symmetry - we have a concept of up and down, left and right. If an animal, such as a starfish, looked into the mirror, and it had no concept of up, down, left, and right (it's "eye" is in the center of it's radial symetrical body) then it would not notice any of it's legs reversed in the mirror.
The mirror does seem to swap top and bottom if you lay down sideways. Left and right are no longer left and right, but top and bottom. Because of your bilateral symmetry, your top and bottom are then being reversed - top [your left side] is now bottom [represented as your right side] and vice versa.
If our concept of top and bottom was rotated 90 degrees the same would be true. Say you were a fish that always swam on it's side... if you looked into a mirror you would wonder why your top and bottom (right and left fins) were always swapped, but not your left and right (head and tail)
Hope that makes sense. :) In actuallity the mirror is not reversing anything... it is reflecting the photons back exactly as they are presented to the mirror surface. We only perceive a flip flop because of our bilateral body-plan.
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SixofNine
Hope that makes sense. :) In actuallity the mirror is not reversing anything... it is reflecting the photons back exactly as they are presented to the mirror surface. We only perceive a flip flop because of our bilateral body-plan.
Yep. See here's the deal ball, that's not really a real person in the mirror
One other way to approach this is to think of right and left as concepts of direction, not as labels for body parts. If you had eyes and a mouth in the back of your head, you'd have to define right and left as "forward left" or "backwards left" for your audience. But then again, most people would just run from you, like they do from me . It's no fun being a freak.