A: This traditional query has a surprisingly attention-grabbing reply. The reality is mirrors don’t truly flip left and right, a lot much less up and down. Instead, they flip the picture of the world you see entrance to again.
When you stand in entrance of a mirror and elevate your right hand, your reflection raises what seems to be its left hand. But that’s solely as a result of your reflection is dealing with you. If another person stood dealing with you and raised their right hand, that might additionally seem in your left aspect. So the mirror isn’t flipping left and right. Instead, it’s flipping depth: what’s in entrance of you turns into what’s behind you within the mirror.
The confusion comes from how our brains interpret the reflection. We think about ourselves circled to face the identical path as our reflection. In doing so, we mentally swap left and right. But the mirror hasn’t performed that: it has merely reversed the picture alongside the axis perpendicular to its floor.
Thus, mirrors don’t desire left-right or up-down. They solely replicate no matter is in entrance of them, flipped entrance to again
