: If white objects reflect all forms of light, how come they don’t act as mirrors?
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A couple of reasons. First of all, mirrors don’t just reflect light; they reflect *images.* That is, the light that hits a mirror doesn’t diffuse and scatter in many directions. Some of this has to do with very smooth surfaces on mirrors’ reflective surfaces. A piece of paper reflects light that hits it, but it won’t bounce all the light equally in the same direction due to its material properties and surface texture.
The other issue worth considering in your question, though, is that white objects *don’t* actually reflect all forms of light in the first place. They reflect wavelengths of light that look white to us, but we’re talking about a visual spectrum that’s particular to human eyes in specific conditions. That white piece of paper doesn’t reflect X-rays, microwaves and infrared light equally, and neither do mirrors. In fact, mirrors can be made of different materials in order to favor the reflection of specific portions of the electromagnetic spectrum. (Think of the James Webb Space Telescope’s gold mirrors, which are especially good for reflecting infrared light.) In other words, there’s a lot more to mirrors than just the range of light they reflect, and white objects aren’t perfectly reflective to all wavelengths of light.
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