Education is no longer what it used to be, and things that were previously learned in elementary school now seem like witchcraft. It turns out that people are discovering in TikTok that the Mirrors show hidden objects behind a paper. What black magic is this? As always, the science He explains it to us in a simple way.
Mirrors are fascinating objects that do very strange things. Why is our left hand the right hand in the mirror, or why do we see hidden objects?
As you can see in the cover photo of the news, these days it has viralized on TikTok a mystery that causes astonishment. Yeah you hide an object in back of A sheet of paperin front of the mirror… the mirror shows it. But how is it possible, if the mirror does not see it?
All the mystery part of a misconception of what it means to “see”. Humans, and living beings in general, we do not see objects and things like that. What our eyes capture is light reflecting off an object. That’s why if we turn off the lights, we don’t see anything.
Light falls on an object, for example a face, and since it is irregular, bounces at different angles. That’s why we can see the shape and depth of objects, as well as the shadows it casts.
A mirror is a perfectly flat surfacewhich has been built in a special way so that reflect light at exactly the same angle at which it hits. That is why we see our reflected image as a perfect copy, although inverted, in the mirror.
A mirror does not “see”, it is not a camera that records. It just reflects the light. what we see is the light that bounces off the mirrorand that our brain converts into an image.
The key of the hidden objects in the mirroris that what we see in the mirror is only a mental or virtual image that our brain generates, depending on the light it receives. That is why in a mirror, even though it is completely flat, we see a reflection with depth, with things in the back of the room that seem to be several meters “inside” the mirror. It is just a mental projection that our brain makes:
With the hidden objects behind a paper It is the same, as we see in the previous photo. If we place our eyes (or the mobile camera) at a certain side angle, the light reflects off the object, reaches the mirror, and bounces back at us at the same angle.
It is our brain that projects that image as if it were inside the mirror, due to its materials and its reflective properties. And since the angle of bounce of the light is the same, the reflected object has the same image and size as the original.
This is the video where they explain it in the clearest and simplest way that we have found. Although he makes fun of the Spanish, we will take it with humor:
There is no magic or witchcraft behind the hidden objects in mirrors. And it’s not a camera trick either.
The thing to remember is that humans do not see objects themselves, but the light that reflects off objects, and reaches our eyes. The properties of mirrors cause the light to bounce at the same angle at which it arrives, and this allows you to see the identical reflections of objects, “inside” the mirror.