Mirror + Mirror

Classical Mechanics Level 1

You are in a room with 2 mirrors facing each other. There is an ordinary lightbulb in the center ceiling of the room. You stand in the middle of the two mirrors that are both standing directly upright and look into one of them. What do you see?

A infinite tunnel that gets smaller are darker over time A room that looks twice as big now A infinite tunnel that gets larger over time A room that looks three times as big now

Jeff Tian by Jeff Tian , 14, Canada

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2 solutions

Krishna Karthik
Sep 9, 2020

Anybody actually try this out? I know from experience lol.

Ok; So the infinite hallway gets darker each time because light energy is lost from going back and forth from each mirror.

Above: an image from Inception. Ariadne creates a mirror hallway in her dream.

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I tried it. My cupboard doors have mirrors on their fronts, so when I open it, it usually forms the infinite tunnel. Its actually pretty cool.

A Former Brilliant Member - 9 months ago

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@Percy Jackson

Yeah. I have a school where there's an art exhibit; one of them's just an infinite tunnel. The light recedes and it gets darker each time.

I've edited my solution.

Krishna Karthik - 9 months ago

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Inception, nice! Are you a fan of all Christopher Nolan movies?

A Former Brilliant Member - 9 months ago
Jeff Tian
Sep 5, 2020

The more you look into the mirror, the smaller and darker it gets because it's the equivalent of looking through a tunnel with the same width - height measurements. The further you look into the tunnel it gets smaller and darker until either it's too dark or it's too far too see (you'll need the brightness of the bulb for that one).

1 Helpful 1 Interesting 1 Brilliant 1 Confused

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