Tuesday, January 3, 2012

What you see

some mirror puzzles

Hold a match horizontally before a mirror. If the match’s head is to the right, then so is that of its reflection — the match is not reversed left to right. But now hold up the matchbox. Its writing is reversed. Why?

“Here is a related puzzle,” writes psychologist Richard Gregory in Mirrors in Mind (1997). “Hold a mug with writing on it to a mirror. What do you see in the mirror? The reflection of the handle is unchanged — but the writing is right-left reversed. Can a mirror read?!

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