Mirror Math

Have you ever imagined a world without a mirror? Well, no matter how much we say that we are not narcissistic in nature, we have always stopped in front of the glass and made our hair, sometimes through the car’s side mirror or maybe sometimes through a restaurant’s/mall’s glass door, while passing by. Standing in front of the mirror, sometimes, helps us recognize our identity when we lose ourselves in the everyday struggle of life. It is more than just a make-up kit. But how did it enter the circle of mankind?

Water was the first mirror to mankind, then came a black stone known as obsidian. By the Bronze Age most cultures used mirrors made from polished discs of bronze, copper, silver, or other metals. In 1835, German chemist Justus von Liebig invented a silvered-glass mirror. From Victorian mirror to today’s makeup kit’s mirror, it has come a long way. But have you ever thought about the journey of mirror’s symmetry?

The mirror formula is 1/v + 1/u = 1/f

The formula for magnification = m = height of the image/ height of the object m = -v/u 

The basic travels back to an equation that involves the object's distance and image distance with focal length known as mirror equation. The mirror equations can be for concave mirror and convex mirror. 

Whereas, plane mirrors are flat mirrors. here, the image formed is vertical and erect. If a girl is standing in the middle of a 7m wide room, with mirrors on opposite sides, can you tell me how far is the reflection of the back of her head?

Mirrors math is quite common in many educational institutions, where students are simply made to learn the formulas, but if we pause a bit and learn the history behind mirrors and what value it adds to our life, especially the ones present in vehicles, I believe it will bring a whole lot of life to it.