A mirror is just a surface that reflects light, and white is just all colours mixed together, so a white surface is just one that reflects all light. So why is one monochrome whilst the other is a reflection?
In: Physics
White surface is white , while mirror has three layers: 1. Transparent glass 2. Silver or aluminium coated layer and 3. Dark coloured/Black board.
The silver atoms behind the glass absorb the photons of incoming light energy and become excited. But that makes them unstable, so they try to become stable again by getting rid of the extra energy—and they do that by giving off some more photons. (You can read about how atoms take in and give out photons in our article about light.) The back of a mirror is usually covered with some sort of darkly colored, protective material to stop the silver coating from getting scratched, and also to reduce the risk of any light seeping through from behind. Silver reflects light better than almost anything else and that’s because it gives off almost as many photons of light as fall on it in the first place. The photons that come out of the mirror are pretty much the same as the ones that go into it.
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