Physical principles[edit]

A mirror reflects light waves to the observer, preserving the wave's curvature and divergence, to
form an image when focused through the lens of the eye. The angle of the impinging wave, as it
traverses the mirror's surface, matches the angle of the reflected wave.
When a sufficiently narrow beam of light is reflected at a point of a surface, the surface's
normal direction 
will be the bisector of the angle formed by the two beams at that point. That is,
the direction vector 
towards the incident beams's source, the normal vector 
, and direction vector 
 of the
reflected beam will be coplanar, and the angle between 
and   
will be equal to the angle of incidence between 
and 
, but of opposite sign.[40]
This property can be explained by the physics of an electromagnetic plane wave that is
incident to a flat surface that is electrically conductive or where the speed of
light changes abruptly, as between two materials with different indices of refraction.

 When parallel beams of light are reflected on a plane surface, the reflected rays

will be parallel too.
 If the reflecting surface is concave, the reflected beams will be convergent, at
least to some extent and for some distance from the surface.
 A convex mirror, on the other hand, will reflect parallel rays
towards divergent directions.
More specifically, a concave parabolic mirror (whose surface is a part of a paraboloid of
revolution) will reflect rays that are parallel to its axis into rays that pass through its focus.
Conversely, a parabolic concave mirror will reflect any ray that comes from its focus
towards a direction parallel to its axis. If a concave mirror surface is a part of a prolate
ellipsoid, it will reflect any ray coming from one focus toward the other focus.[40]
A convex parabolic mirror, on the other hand, will reflect rays that are parallel to its axis
into rays that seem to emanate from the focus of the surface, behind the mirror.
Conversely, it will reflect incoming rays that converge toward that point into rays that are
parallel to the axis. A convex mirror that is part of a prolate ellipsoid will reflect rays that
converge towards one focus into divergent rays that seem to emanate from the other
focus.[40]
Spherical mirrors do not reflect parallel rays to rays that converge to or diverge from a
single point, or vice versa, due to spherical aberration. However, a spherical mirror
whose diameter is sufficiently small compared to the sphere's radius will behave very
similarly to a parabolic mirror whose axis goes through the mirror's center and the center
of that sphere; so that spherical mirrors can substitute for parabolic ones in many
applications.[40]
A similar aberration occurs with parabolic mirrors when the incident rays are parallel
among themselves but not parallel to the mirror's axis, or are divergent from a point that
is not the focus – as when trying to form an image of an objet that is near the mirror or
spans a wide angle as seen from it. However, this aberration can be sufficiently small if
the object image is sufficiently far from the mirror and spans a sufficiently small angle
around its axis.[40]
Mirror images[edit]
Main article: Mirror image

A mirror reverses an image in the direction of the normal angle of incidence. When the surface is at
a 90°, horizontal angle from the object, the image appears inverted 180° along the vertical (right and
 left remain on the correct sides, but the image appears upside down), because the normal angle of
incidence points down vertically toward the water.

A mirror reflects a real image back to the observer, forming a virtual image; a perceptual illusion that
objects in the image are behind the mirror's surface.

Mirrors reflect an image to the observer. However, unlike a projected image on a screen,
an image does not actually exist on the surface of the mirror. For example, when two
people look at each other in a mirror, both see different images on the same surface.
When the light waves converge through the lens of the eye they interfere with each other
to form the image on the surface of the retina, and since both viewers see waves coming
from different directions, each sees a different image in the same mirror. Thus, the
images observed in a mirror depends upon the angle of the mirror with respect to the
eye. The angle between the object and the observer is always twice the angle between
the eye and the normal, or the direction perpendicular to the surface. The mirror forms
a virtual image of whatever is in the opposite angle from the viewer, meaning that objects
in the image appear to exist in a direct line of sight—behind the surface of the mirror—at
an equal distance from their position in front of the mirror. Objects behind the observer,
or between the observer and the mirror, are reflected back to the observer without any
actual change in orientation; the light waves are simply reversed in a direction
perpendicular to the mirror. However, when viewer is facing the object and the mirror is at
an angle between them, the image appears inverted 180° along the direction of the
angle.[41]
Objects viewed in a (plane) mirror will appear laterally inverted (e.g., if one raises one's
right hand, the image's left hand will appear to go up in the mirror), but not vertically
inverted (in the image a person's head still appears above their body). [42] However, a
mirror does not usually "swap" left and right any more than it swaps top and bottom. A
mirror typically reverses the forward-backward axis. To be precise, it reverses the object
in the direction perpendicular to the mirror surface (the normal). Because left and right
are defined relative to front-back and top-bottom, the "flipping" of front and back results in
the perception of a left-right reversal in the image. (i.e.: When a person raises their left
hand, the actual left hand raises in the mirror, but gives the illusion of a right hand raising
because the image appears to be facing them. If they stand side-on to a mirror, the mirror
really does reverse left and right, that is, objects that are physically closer to the mirror
always appear closer in the virtual image, and objects farther from the surface always
appear symmetrically farther away regardless of angle.)
Looking at an image of oneself with the front-back axis flipped results in the perception of
an image with its left-right axis flipped. When reflected in the mirror, a person's right hand
remains directly opposite their real right hand, but it is perceived by the mind as the left
hand in the image. When a person looks into a mirror, the image is actually front-back
reversed, which is an effect similar to the hollow-mask illusion. Notice that a mirror image
is fundamentally different from the object and cannot be reproduced by simply rotating
the object.
For things that may be considered as two-dimensional objects (like text), front-back
reversal cannot usually explain the observed reversal. An image is a two-dimensional
representation of a three-dimensional space, and because it exists in a two-
dimensional plane, an image can be viewed from front or back. In the same way that text
on a piece of paper appears reversed if held up to a light and viewed from behind, text
held facing a mirror will appear reversed, because the image of the text is still facing
away from the observer. Another way to understand the reversals observed in images of
objects that are effectively two-dimensional is that the inversion of left and right in a
mirror is due to the way human beings perceive their surroundings. A person's reflection
in a mirror appears to be a real person facing them, but for that person to really face
themselves (i.e.: twins) one would have to physically turn and face the other, causing an
actual swapping of right and left. A mirror causes an illusion of left-right reversal because
left and right were not swapped when the image appears to have turned around to face
the viewer. The viewer's egocentric navigation (left and right with respect to the
observer's point of view; i.e.: "my left...") is unconsciously replaced with their allocentric
navigation (left and right as it relates another's point of view; "...your right") when
processing the virtual image of the apparent person behind the mirror. Likewise, text
viewed in a mirror would have to be physically turned around, facing the observer and
away from the surface, actually swapping left and right, to be read in the mirror. [41]

Optical properties[edit]
Reflectivity[edit]

Four different mirrors, showing the difference in reflectivity. Clockwise from upper left: dielectric
(80%), aluminum (85%), chrome (25%), and enhanced silver (99.9%). All are first-surface mirrors
except the chrome mirror. The dielectric mirror reflects yellow light from the first-surface, but acts like
an antireflection coating to purple light, thus produced a ghost reflection of the lightbulb from the
second-surface.

The reflectivity of a mirror is determined by the percentage of reflected light per the total
of the incident light. The reflectivity may vary with wavelength. All or a portion of the light
not reflected is absorbed by the mirror, while in some cases a portion may also transmit
through. Although some small portion of the light will be absorbed by the coating, the
reflectivity is usually higher for first-surface mirrors, eliminating both reflection and
absorption losses from the substrate. The reflectivity is often determined by the type and
thickness of the coating. When the thickness of the coating is sufficient to prevent
transmission, all of the losses occur due to absorption. Aluminum is harder, less
expensive, and more resistant to tarnishing than silver, and will reflect 85 to 90% of the
light in the visible to near-ultraviolet range, but experiences a drop in its reflectance
between 800 and 900 nm. Gold is very soft and easily scratched, costly, yet does not
tarnish. Gold is greater than 96% reflective to near and far-infrared light between 800 and
12000 nm, but poorly reflects visible light with wavelengths shorter than 600 nm (yellow).
Silver is expensive, soft, and quickly tarnishes, but has the highest reflectivity in the
visual to near-infrared of any metal. Silver can reflect up to 98 or 99% of light to
wavelengths as long as 2000 nm, but loses nearly all reflectivity at wavelengths shorter
than 350 nm. Dielectric mirrors can reflect greater than 99.99% of light, but only for a
narrow range of wavelengths, ranging from a bandwidth of only 10 nm to as wide as
100 nm for tunable lasers. However, dielectric coatings can also enhance the reflectivity
of metallic coatings and protect them from scratching or tarnishing. Dielectric materials
are typically very hard and relatively cheap, however the number of coats needed
generally makes it an expensive process. In mirrors with low tolerances, the coating
thickness may be reduced to save cost, and simply covered with paint to absorb
transmission.[43]
Surface quality[edit]

Flatness errors, like rippled dunes across the surface, produced these artifacts, distortion, and low
image quality in the far field reflection of a household mirror.

Surface quality, or surface accuracy, measures the deviations from a perfect, ideal
surface shape. Increasing the surface quality reduces distortion, artifacts,
and aberration in images, and helps increase coherence, collimation, and reduce
unwanted divergence in beams. For plane mirrors, this is often described in terms
of flatness, while other surface shapes are compared to an ideal shape. The surface
quality is typically measured with items like interferometers or optical flats, and are
usually measured in wavelengths of light (λ). These deviations can be much larger or
much smaller than the surface roughness. A normal household-mirror made with float
glass may have flatness tolerances as low as 9–14λ per inch (25.4 mm), equating to a
deviation of 5600 through 8800 nanometers from perfect flatness. Precision ground and
polished mirrors intended for lasers or telescopes may have tolerances as high as λ/50
(1/50 of the wavelength of the light, or around 12 nm) across the entire surface.[44]
[43] The surface quality can be affected by factors such as temperature changes, internal
stress in the substrate, or even bending effects that occur when combining materials with
different coefficients of thermal expansion, similar to a bimetallic strip.[45]