I found this problem in No Ordinary Genius by Christopher Sykes. It's pretty easy. You look in a mirror, and let's say you part your hair on the right side. You look in the mirror, and your image has its hair parted on the left side, so the image is left-to-right mixed up. But it's not top-to-bottom mixed up, because the top of the head of the image is there at the top, and the feet are down at the bottom. The question is: how does the mirror know to get the left and right mixed up, but not the up and down?
--Question Posted by Richard Feynman
If you face East and Mirror faces West. the left hand points to North and right hand points to South. The image of your left hand points to North and right hand image points to South. When we turn to face the same direction as Mirror (now we face West), we begin to call North as Right and South as Left. The problem is with our orientation dependent nomenclature for Left and Right. The Mirror shows what it sees :)
As to confusing Top and Bottom, if we were agile enough to turn over our heads just as we can by our side, and call Head side as Top and Foot-side as Bottom, we will end up having the same confusion. It is easier to imagine a cardboard image of yours before the mirror that is swung about the Top edge of the Mirror to face West, but now has an Upside-Down orientation.
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Disoriented? to become really disoriented.
4 comments:
I was intrigued too, so what is the explanation??
you may have to wait a bit for the answer. I think I have it.
justask the person in the mirror..
here is what I found on the Mirror problem
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