A student stands facing a large vertical plane mirror in a physics laboratory and…
PHYSICS · Multi-part · CBSE · Physics · Light — Reflection and Refraction · Light — Reflection and Refraction
Problem
A student stands facing a large vertical plane mirror in a physics laboratory and notices that her reflected image appears to exchange left and right but not top and bottom.
Answer the following questions about the orientation of images produced by a plane mirror.
(a) Describe the orientation of the virtual image formed by a plane mirror with respect to the object. Your description should include whether the image is real or virtual, upright or inverted, and laterally reversed or not.
(b) Using a set of Cartesian coordinate axes whose +x-direction is normal to the mirror surface and whose +y and +z axes lie parallel to the mirror, explain why a person’s right hand appears as a left hand in the mirror while the top of the head remains at the top in the image.
(c) Suppose instead the person looks into a horizontal mirror mounted on the ceiling. Predict and explain whether a similar left–right reversal, a top–bottom reversal, both, or neither would be observed.