this post was submitted on 26 Aug 2024
74 points (91.1% liked)

Ask Lemmy

26877 readers
2116 users here now

A Fediverse community for open-ended, thought provoking questions

Please don't post about US Politics. If you need to do this, try [email protected]


Rules: (interactive)


1) Be nice and; have funDoxxing, trolling, sealioning, racism, and toxicity are not welcomed in AskLemmy. Remember what your mother said: if you can't say something nice, don't say anything at all. In addition, the site-wide Lemmy.world terms of service also apply here. Please familiarize yourself with them


2) All posts must end with a '?'This is sort of like Jeopardy. Please phrase all post titles in the form of a proper question ending with ?


3) No spamPlease do not flood the community with nonsense. Actual suspected spammers will be banned on site. No astroturfing.


4) NSFW is okay, within reasonJust remember to tag posts with either a content warning or a [NSFW] tag. Overtly sexual posts are not allowed, please direct them to either [email protected] or [email protected]. NSFW comments should be restricted to posts tagged [NSFW].


5) This is not a support community.
It is not a place for 'how do I?', type questions. If you have any questions regarding the site itself or would like to report a community, please direct them to Lemmy.world Support or email [email protected]. For other questions check our partnered communities list, or use the search function.


Reminder: The terms of service apply here too.

Partnered Communities:

Tech Support

No Stupid Questions

You Should Know

Reddit

Jokes

Ask Ouija


Logo design credit goes to: tubbadu


founded 1 year ago
MODERATORS
 

edit: Thank you to all who answered! I’m amazed at how many ways you came up with to answer this.

you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
[–] [email protected] 12 points 2 months ago* (last edited 2 months ago)

ITT are a bunch of bad explanations; some are ok but here's more detail:

Imagine a transparent sheet of glass with words printed on it. Hold it up so you can read it. Now stand in front of a mirror. You can read the words, both in the mirror and on the glass in front of you. Neither set of words is flipped.

Now imagine turning the glass around so the words face the mirror. As you rotate the glass 180 degrees horizontally, it flips around mirror image. Both in the glass in front of you, and in the mirror, you can now see a "mirror image" view of the text. But the mirror didn't do anything -- you did, when you chose to flip the glass around horizontally instead of vertically to face the mirror. If you'd tumbled it top over bottom to face the mirror, then the text wouldn't have flipped left and right, but it would have flipped high and low.

Your head is similar to the text, except you can't see through it. But, if you rotated yourself to face away from the mirror, and your head was transparent, someone looking at you would see a not-mirror-image face of yours, both looking at them and in the mirror from the other side. Same as the text. Nothing is flipped. When you chose to spin yourself horizontally to face the mirror, instead of doing a headstand, you chose the transformation that will led to seeing the mirror image instead of the high-and-low flipped image of your face. If you face away from the mirror, and do a handstand instead of spinning horizontally, you'll see a vertically flipped face with its left and right preserved.

Hopefully that makes sense.