Why is spoon reflection upside down

Mirrors that have bumps and bulges in them change the way light is reflected and this changes what our eyes see. So, what about the spoon reflection?

Well, a shiny metal spoon can act like a mirror and reflect light. A convex mirror reflects light from a wide angle and allows you to see more things but the things you see will appear smaller than they actually are.

You might find convex mirrors on cars to help drivers see things to the sides and behind them. Concave mirrors can do two tricky things — if an object is far away from the mirror, it will appear much bigger than it actually is; if an object is close-up to the mirror, the reflection will be small and upside-down. For more information about how light waves and reflections work, you might like to check out this short video. You are commenting using your WordPress.

You are commenting using your Google account. The spoon's surface is concave curved inwards. Concave mirrors give reflections upside down, and strangely the image in the mirror appears to be in front of the mirror rather than behind it. This can be explained using complicated diagrams showing rays reflecting and converging, but at the end of the day the only simple answer is 'that's just the way it is'.

Jeeves Answer has 3 votes. Jeeves 20 year member replies Answer has 3 votes. A difficult question to answer without a diagram. Basically the light rays that strike the top of the curve are reflected downwards and return as the bottom of the image.

Similarly the light rays from your face that hit the bottom of the spoon are reflected upwards and return as the top of the image. Have a look in a physics school book and the diagrams should make it clear. Because the concave shape of the spoon acts like the lens of your eye or a camera, i.

Currently voted the best answer. If you really want to mix yourself up, it would be right side up if your brain wasn't already flipping the image. The lens of your eye inverts images as well.

Photons — particles of light — stream toward the smooth pane of glass and bounce off it. The image of everything in front of the mirror is reflected backward, retracing the path it traveled to get there. Nothing is switching left to right or up-down. A mirror reverses the image it reflects and the same is true for a camera photo or a video image. Begin typing your search term above and press enter to search. Press ESC to cancel.

Skip to content Home Physics Why am I upside down in my spoon? Ben Davis February 23, Why am I upside down in my spoon? What counts is the 'world map' you have in your brain - not how you input the information. Your eyes are not the only way you become aware of the space around you. You know the inside of your mouth intimately by using the nerves in your tongue, for instance. The 'visible' picture of our mouths can be quite a surprise, in fact. Working around car engines, we often use touch to build up a picture, too - or at least, a version of it.

Pages: [ 1 ] Go Up.