Why is it that when I’m looking at a mirror with my glasses off, everything is blurry, even though the mirror is really close to me?
In: Physics
The lenses of the glasses are designed to help correct for light incoming at various angles, focusing them in tandem with the lenses in your eyes to form an image on your retina.
The issue is that the mirror isn’t the origin of the light you are seeing, instead light that reflects from the mirror retains the angle it came in at. This is why by changing your viewpoint will change what you can see in the mirror. But this also means that your glasses are needed to correct for the angle of light coming from distant objects reflected in the mirror as if they were actually the combined distance away of your distance to the mirror plus the distance of the mirror to the object.
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