How+does+a+mirror+work?+Part+2

**A mirror, and how it works** **By: Camryn R ** **Last updated: 10/2/11 **

A mirror is a piece of glass. The piece of glass is coated on the back with usually either aluminum or silver. The mirrors surface must be completely smooth or the light will be scattered and won’t be properly reflected.
 * What is a mirror? **



The light that bounces off of you travels toward the mirror and gets absorbed by the mirror’s silver coating. The atoms of light that bounced off you become unstable and try and get back to their stable state. To do this they give off new photons of light that travel out of the mirror create the reflection that you see.
 * How a mirror works **



Different mirrors create different reflection. A normal mirror that you typically use is called a plane mirror. It reflects the real image and looks about the same distance away that you actually are. Unlike concave or convex mirrors where the object seems closer or father away then it actually is.
 * Types of mirrors **



**Citation ** **mirror. **" //Encyclopædia Britannica//. //Encyclopædia Britannica Online School Edition//.
 * Databases : **

Encyclopædia Britannica, Inc., 2011. Web. 23 Sept. 2011.

< [] <span style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS","sans-serif"; font-size: 10px;">>.

//<span style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS","sans-serif"; font-size: 11px;">Mirrors and Lenses //<span style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS","sans-serif"; font-size: 11px;">. Prod. Colgren Communications. Colgren Communications, 2004. //Discovery Education//. Web. 23 September 2011. <http://www.discoveryeducation.com/>.

<span style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS","sans-serif"; font-size: 11px;">Books:

<span style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS","sans-serif"; font-size: 11px;">Woodford, Chris. //<span style="font-family: "Arial","sans-serif"; font-size: 11px;"> Cool stuff and how it works. ////<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 11px;"> London:DK, 2005. Print. //