To clarify my wife is extremely smart but doesn’t get mirrors. She thinks if we are looking at each other from just the right angle that she could see me but I won’t see her. I explained that if I am looking at your eyes then you can guaranteed see mine. I have tried to explain it in a million different ways but am having no luck. Please help.
Edit: Some great answers but I have already tried similar examples. I literally used a laser pointer but she still believes she could find the exact right angle where she can see me but I can’t see her…maybe she is doomed to just never get it. To clarify things she is a trained financial planner than can do some crazy math in her head but this baffles her.
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Here’s how sight works : when you see an object, like someone else’s blue eye, what enters your eyes is the light that was reflected from said object.
Here’s how mirror works : classic mirrors reflect light in a perfectly symmetric way. The light that hits the mirror from a certain angle will bounce back in the exact same angle.
So unless there’s a trick, there’s no way you can catch the light reflected from someone’s eye without your own eye reflecting light towards this person’s own eye.
If you have a laser pointer, you can demonstrate that. Just don’t aim at someone’s eye.
It would be possible for her to see parts of you without you being able to see her, but if she can see your eyes you can see hers
The angle of the light (or view) into the mirror is the same angle exiting the mirror.
I would suggest trying to listen to her to understand how she thinks.
If there is a path of light from one set of eyes to another, then it is literally impossible for one person to not be able to see the other in the mirror. Defies laws of physics and light refraction
Light reflects off of the surface of the mirror at the same angle in both directions, and your eye perceives the light which falls on it. Taken together, those things mean that if the light from your eyes can travel on a path to hers, the light from hers will travel back on the same path to yours, and you will see her. Technically she’s correct though – it’s not a guarantee because she might be, y’know, blind.
If A can see the eyes of B, there must be a path for light from the eyes of B to the eyes of A; that’s how you can see them. Light can travel on that path in either direction. So it can also go from the eyes of A to the eyes of B.
I don’t believe this is a good place to ask it ELI5, because you’re not the one having the problem.
You should ask her to explain to you how mirrors work, and have her reason about that “perfect angle” she thinks exists. Eg how can there be only one such angle, but we have two eyes. What would happen, in her mind, if you shift from that angle just by a tiny bit (all directions possible!), what would she then see. What does she even mean with “you cannot see her”, does she mean it’s away from the picture in the mirror as it appears to you? Does she mean there is a “black hole” somewhere in the mirror, something where light bends around or something?
Sooner or later you will find a contradiction in her reasoning. Don’t be a dick about it, don’t say “ah haah look here you dummy”, instead try saying something like “I don’t understand how x and y go together”
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