Mirror, my beautiful mirror. On TikTok, netizens have seen a surprising trend appear on their app: filming an object hidden behind a sheet of paper and being surprised that the same object is visible in the mirror.
“Can someone explain to me how this is possible?”, “Can someone explain to me how the mirror knows that there is a hidden object?”, “How can a mirror see behind an opaque object?”. So many questions that accompany the videos posted by thousands on TikTok for a few days.
Irony or true questioning, American users have been passionate about this topic. And the number of views is piling up, more than 86 million for the #mirrorreflection hashtag. And 1.7 million visits for the French equivalent.
And the formula works to rack up views. More than 5 million views and 9,000 comments in four days for this German user, more used to beauty tutorials than to the laws of physics.
Beneath the videos, mocking comments go well: “You didn’t take physics in school,” “Yeah, it’s the beginning of a mirror,” or even “TikTok makes me lose faith in humanity.”
A very rational explanation.
However, videos and diagrams flourish to explain this scientific phenomenon.
In fact, it is an optical illusion created by reflection. Thus, the light reflects off the object, reaches the mirror and bounces in the field of view.
“The fact that so many people are afraid and wonder about this phenomenon terrifies me,” reacts this creator of scientific content.
Source: BFM TV
