This is one of the nicest explanations for one of the deepest mysteries of our modern (as in post Bronze Age) technological era: Why is it that when you look in a mirror, left and right are reversed, but not up and down?
The answer is simple: Neither is reversed. What is switched around is not one side vs. the other or top vs. bottom, but rather, which side of your face your nose is on. When you look in a mirror, you do not see the back of your head. The image in the mirror is the image of yourself with front and back reversed. All else follows from that.
Anyway, enjoy the show. Hat tip: clevedan....
Richard Feynman and the Looking glass:
More like this
This is one of my favorite demos. I like it because anyone can do it at home and people usually find the results surprising. Here is the situation:
By now you've probably all heard about the paper published by Plotnik, de Waal, and Reiss in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences in late October titled "Self-recognition in an Asian elephant." I suspect that for p
A little bit before Christmas, I spent an afternoon swapping mirrors out of one line of the apparatus. I was losing too much of the laser light before it went into the chamber, and replacing the mirrors increased the power entering the apparatus by a factor of two or so.
Take another look at this picture of the Rokeby Venus from last week's post on mirrors in art:
I love the way Feynman explained things. The QED lectures were just like that.
Thanks! I missed the response from the other post that linked to the video.
If there's a better explicator of science than Feynman I don't know who it would be; he was a pure gem, and any video interview with him is not to be missed.