where did mirrors come from and what was the initial purpose of their use?
109390
The first mirror was no doubt a pool of water. It only follows that at some point ancient man found other things that reflected an image. The first use was surely to see ones self followed shortley by spying on someone else!
183575
(1)mirrors reflect light because it has a shiny and reflective metal behind it.\n(2)camera lenses
19019
There is no technical reason, other than consistancy. It was established by the Egyptian astronomer Ptolemy a couple thousand years ago. Probably because the land that was known when the first maps were made were in the North.
161633
Why do we appear backwards in the reflection of a mirror? How do we see our true image?\n\nWebsite below has the answers.
810039
Even in Ancient Egypt they knew how to reflect light into a dark room.\n\nWe have been using mirrors and other reflective device to enhance the natural light of different object.  From light houses to gas lamps to solar heaters just to name a few.\n\nOne of the newest things to buy is the solatube (daylight pipe, light pipe,tubular skylight) that reflects sunlight down a tube to the room that you wish.  \n\nYou might just want to have a light color wall and carpets to lighten a room.
1053030
Everything you see comes from light that enters your eyes.  The study of light is called OPTICS it is part of the science named PHYSICS.\n\nWhat your reflection looks like depends on a lot of things.  How large is the sphere? Where are you standing in the sphere?  If you think about it, what you see in the mirror depends on where you stand.  You can try this in just a regular flat mirror.  Stand in different spots, and look at what you see.\n\nI have given you a few links showing diagrams of how light rays are reflected in a spherical mirror.   If you were inside, you would be seeing a concave surface.\n\nEscher drew pictures of what he would look like in a spherical mirror, from the outside.  You can do this yourself,  by looking in the gardening area for a mirror globe, or a glass Christmas ball.\n\nA concave reflecting surface can be found in a magnifying mirror, or in a spoon or bowl.  I have also included a link to purchase spherical mirrors and other optical  devices.  Finally, I have included a site with some virtual optical experiments.\n\nI hope this helps to answer your question.  Have fun!
8264
It's because of the minor imperfections in the placement of the mirrors. Also, because the effect can't be seen without seeing it at an angle, it causes a curve based on your viewpoint.
818655
The glass is poured to the desired thickness, and then silver is applied to the back to give it's reflective surface.  It is then coated with another substance to prevent the light from passing all the way through.  You then see your reflection.\nIn a piece of two way mirror, the silver is applied to the front of the mirror and the other non-reflective substance is omitted.  Thus, you can see all the way through.\nOne good way to tell if you are looking at a piece of two way mirror, is to put your finger up to the glass.  If there is no 'space' between the tip of your finger and the glass...it may be 2-way.  If there is a 'space', it may be only one-way.\nNext time you go into a store, look around for mirrors that appear in the most unusual places.  More than likely, these are 2-way.
67995
The basics...\n\nBackground:\nLight from the sun, light bulbs, etc. hit objects.  That light is reflected off but as a color which is a specific wavelength of light.  Our eyes get those reflect wavelengths and that's how we see.  Different color objects reflect light as different wavelengths.\n\nMirrors:\nMirrors reflect light off of them just like any other object.  The difference is mirrors reflect the same wavelength that hit them.\n\nSo, images seem to reflect when looking at a mirror.\n\nThere is a lot more too it but that is the basics.
185470
A  The Reflecting Telescope \n\nIn October 1667, soon after his return to Cambridge, Newton was elected to a minor fellowship at Trinity College. Six months later he received a major fellowship and shortly thereafter was named Master of Arts. During this period he devoted much of his time to practical work in optics. His earlier experiments with the prism convinced him that a telescope’s resolution is limited not so much by the difficulty of building flawless lenses as by the general refraction differences of differently colored rays. Newton observed that lenses refract, or bend, different colors of light by a slightly different amount. He believed that these differences would make it impossible to bring a beam of white light (which includes all the different colors of light) to a single focus. Thus he turned his attention to building a reflecting telescope, or a telescope that uses mirrors instead of lenses, as a practical solution. Mirrors reflect all colors of light by the same amount. \n\nScottish mathematician James Gregory had proposed a design for a reflecting telescope in 1663, but Newton was the first scientist to build one. He built a reflecting telescope with a 1.3-in (3.3-cm) mirror in 1668. This telescope magnified objects about 40 times and differed slightly from Gregory’s in design. Three years later, the Royal Society, England’s official association of prominent scientists and mathematicians, invited Newton to submit his telescope for inspection. He sent one similar to his original model, and the Society established Newton’s dominance in the field by publishing a description of the instrument.\n\nB  Calculus (Newton’s “Fluxional Method”) \n\nIn 1669 Newton gave his Trinity mathematics professor Isaac Barrow an important manuscript, which is generally known by its shortened Latin title, De Analysi. This work contained many of Newton’s conclusions about calculus (what Newton called his “fluxional method”). Although the paper was not immediately published, Barrow made its results known to several of the leading mathematicians of Britain and Europe. This paper established Newton as one of the top mathematicians of his day and as the founder of modern calculus (along with Leibniz). Calculus addresses such concepts as the rate of change of a certain quantity, the slope of a curve at a given point, the computation of maximum and minimum values of functions, and the calculation of areas bounded by curves. When Barrow retired in 1669, he suggested to the college that Newton succeed him. Newton became the new professor of mathematics and chose optics as the subject of his first course of lectures.\n\nC  Newton’s First Published Works \n\nIn early 1672 Newton was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society. Shortly afterward Newton offered to submit a paper detailing his discovery of the composite nature of white light. Much impressed by his account, the Society published it. This publication triggered a long series of objections to Newton’s scientific views in general, mostly by European scientists from outside England. Many of the criticisms later proved unsound. The strongest criticism of Newton’s work, however, concerned his work on the theory of gravity and came from English inventor, mathematician, and curator of the Royal Society Robert Hooke. Hooke insisted that he had suggested fundamental principles of the law of gravitation to Newton. Newton answered these objections carefully and at first patiently but later with growing irritation. These public arguments aggravated Newton’s sensitivity to criticism, and for several years he stopped publishing his findings.
410815
Nor inside ANY of the ancient egyptian monuments made prior to the Roman invasion in 52 B.C. The egyptians used another mechanism:Mirrors!\nYes they used a complicated system of mirrors to reflect the day light all the way inside the huge monuments they've built, which were siometimes several hundereds of feet high (like the pryamids, which aremore than 80 pyramids, the most famous of which,the biggest, but not the oldest, are the 3 giza pyramids) or far below the ground(tutemoses grave and other similarly fabulous graves in valley of the kings, or dug several meters deep inside solid granite mountains (like "Dir El Bahary" temple of hatshipsut)\nYes, as agatha christie said,they did it with mirrors :)
871004
Ancient civilizations knew this. Observations of lunar eclipses, plus the fact that the horizon is at equal distances no matter what direction we look made this pretty obvious. The earliest were probably the Assyrians or Babylonians, who developed the first coherent astronomical systems (claims by people that the natives of India were first notwithstanding)\n\nThe issue was not the shape of the earth, but its size, and its place in the scheme of things (at the center or off to the side.) It took thousands of years to displace the earth conceptually from the center of creation to a planet orbiting a star, which was then displaced from the center of the universe to a position in an outlying arm of our galaxy, which itself was displaced from being the entire universe to being the largest galaxy and at the center of the universe to being just another galaxy among billions. So we're just a bunch of hicks from the sticks.
793532
Good question!  However, 1-way mirrors are not really 1-way: they let as much light out as they do in!  They depend on the fact that the "invisible" side is less well illuminated than the "visible" side.
1054962
Mirrors are made from glass which can be formed by lightning striking silica sand.
120576
Instead of getting such huge mirrors, you might be better off buying some 12" square mirror tiles and use them to make whatever size mirror you need. Admittedly they will show the seams between tiles, but they will be considerably less expensive and easier to obtain than mirrors of the size you are writing about.
80176
sure its called a mirror
945701
playing around with mirrors....and light.....and lenses