The Mirrors of Classic Physics :: Physics Science Self Identification Essays

The Mirrors of Classic Physics Plenty of conceptions of mirrors are not so different from models in middle school physics. The mirror is a line dividing the ‘real’ from the ‘virtual’, and the image is the same on both sides. It is a plane in three-dimensional space, a slash in textual space, and a boundary to fluid spaces. In physics class, rays of light go from each point of the image and bounce off the mirror in such a way that they seem to have come from the virtual object. These are not the only mirrors. These are instead the only things that count as mirrors. Isn’t there a reflection that follows (or doesn’t) the same physical principles in every non-black object? And, of course, objects are just about never perfectly black, and thus totally non-reflective. Even the ink of a Rorschach blot shines. The mirrors of classic physics demonstrations and occasional philosophical or metaphysical points are perfect flat perfectly reflective surfaces, it is an aberrant mirror that is not so. Yet it takes nothing but glass, silver, and backing to make what often counts a mirror. Glass runs, paint scratches, and backings thrive in the daily devastations of their environs. Further, silver is a rather lustrous and highly reflective metal, but is not perfect at either (thus gold surfaced CD-R’s.) As partially transparent mirrors make abundantly clear, mirrors have color and a backing, even though that color is usually ‘ clear’ glass with silver and then white behind it. The computer monitor and TV screens are reflective, but then so are the reactions of the world in general. Indeed, one might say the bathroom in which a mirror might be installed reflects much more about the face in the visage than a picture (with minimized motion) in the mirror itself. What do the tiles, the toilets, the colors, the lights, the windows and walls say about you before you even get to the mirror. The idea of mirrors and identification requires a throwing back of our world from outside, but it is in just such a move that ‘our world’ is situated as a becoming. All this is not to say that the process of mirror embodied in the particular glass and silver is all a mirror is or can be.