How come my short-sightedness affects reflections?

1.36K views

Maybe biology, maybe physics. I’m not sure. Either way, I really can’t wrap my head around this

When I look in a mirror without my glasses on, everything in the ‘distance’ in the mirror is still blurry, but how can this be? All the light reaching my eye from that mirror is coming from the same place. The light can’t be out of focus before it reaches the mirror, so how come it can be when reflecting from the flat plane to my eye?

*Edit: I do understand how an image is produced in a mirror and how we perceive depth in a reflected image, but the fact is that the light is still reflecting off of a flat plane at a uniform distance – I can’t understand how that reflection can possibly have **actual** depth that can affect my shortsightedness*

In: Biology

9 Answers

Anonymous 0 Comments

Light is not like a laser, that flies straight into your eye. Normal materials scatter light that hits them, your eye does not catch on line of light, it catches a cone. This cone is then focussed onto your retina, like [here](https://www.iblindness.org/wp/wp-content/uploads/2014/06/pluslens.gif).

The further away something is, the less it needs to be focussed. Shortsighted people have either too long eyeballs or their eye focuses the light to early and it scatters again before hitting the retina again. Just like a magnifying glass, where you focus the sun on a spot and you have to hold it at the right distance of the spot.

Now a mirror does not send out a new cone, it does not scatter but reflect. It just bounces off a new cone that looks exactly the [same](https://qph.fs.quoracdn.net/main-qimg-3987582024b258e0c625e0352e9fcf9e). So you still need to focus it the same way as if the image were behind the mirror.

You are viewing 1 out of 9 answers, click here to view all answers.