Here’s How Mirrors Work, TikTokers

A recent TikTok has been making the rounds, coupled with either facepalming disappointment in the American education system or quiet, vulnerable admittance that it’s slightly confusing. 

The TikTok in question features a woman holding a towel up between her and the mirror and asking her husband, who is off to the side (that will come up later), how it can “see her.” I understand wanting to point to this as evidence that we’re getting dumber, but at the same time? Like asking how a plane can fly when it’s so heavy, it’s a question met with a scoff, but a scoff followed by a meandering, less-than-confident explanation.

In case you, in your heart of hearts, are guarding the secret that you too, don’t know how this works, I’m here to do my damnedest to help. The issue seems to be the thought that a mirror is something that displays what’s in front of it, like its frequent modern day replacement, the front-facing camera phone. But a mirror, of course, is nothing more than a surface that reflects light near-perfectly — in many angles, not just perpendicular. 

Light is bouncing off pretty much everything, all the time. That light entering our eyes is what allows us to see. So the light careening off this dear sweet woman’s face then caroms off the mirror into the eyes (and camera) of the husband, like an unlucky champagne cork. As long as a ray of light is able to make it from her face to her husband’s eye with a bounce off the mirror like a little light trampoline, he will be able to see what’s behind the towel. 

If you’re really struggling to grasp this, notice as he changes his angle, parts of her face and arm do in fact become obscured.

If the puzzle pieces still stubbornly refuse to fit together?, here’s a scenario to drive home the fact that mirrors don’t simply display what’s in front of them. Imagine a corner, a perfect right angle, with a mirror placed in it at a 45-degree angle. With how this woman seems to want mirrors to work, you’d think that, looking down the hallway, the mirror would display a reflection of that same corner, split perfectly in half. But, as you’ve probably experienced, what you’ll see instead is down the adjacent hallway, since the light coming that way is reflected into your eyes. 

You’re also halfway to a telescope, for what it’s worth.