Article View: sci.misc
Article #696Re: quick question
From: Bradford Smith
Date: Thu, 28 Jan 1988 01:45
Date: Thu, 28 Jan 1988 01:45
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As has been observed, a mirror reverse FRONT/BACK, not left right as it appears. The reason for the confustion is that in everyday life, left and right are defined in terms of front and back and top and bottom are not. Therefore, reversing front/back will reverse left/right but not top/bottom. The reason text is always reverse is because in order to read it, you must look at the "front" of the letters, not the back, which is what is seen when text is seen in a mirror. The way I visualise mirror reversal is to picture seeing the FRONT of the object as if I were looking at it from the back. This is what a mirror does. It is difficult to visualise (even more difficult to describe) because one expects the rest of the three dimensional body to be in the way. It is not in a mirrir because a mirror is 2-D. So, to understand why left/right are reversed, all that need be done is to picture the object as two dimensional and look at it from the other side. No probelm. :-) -Bradford
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Path: arc1-ca.pugleaf.net!utzoo!utgpu!water!watmath!clyde!rutgers!rochester!cornell!batcomputer!smythe From: smythe@batcomputer.tn.cornell.edu (Bradford Smith) Newsgroups: sci.misc Subject: Re: quick question Message-ID: <3508@batcomputer.tn.cornell.edu> Date: 28 Jan 88 01:45:22 GMT References: <1170@petsd.UUCP> <73600006@uiucdcsp> <6730@agate.BERKELEY.EDU> Reply-To: smythe@tcgould.tn.cornell.edu (Bradford Smith) Distribution: na Organization: Cornell Theory Center, Cornell University, Ithaca NY Lines: 20