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| Take a shiny spoon and check out your reflection. Reflected from the back convex surface you will see a large right-side-up image of yourself, but when you look inside the concave surface, the image will be smaller and up-side-down. Can you figure out why? (Hint: draw a diagram) |
When you look into the inside of a spoon (the concave part), light is reflected in, light rays cross, and you get back an image that is smaller and upside-down.
When you look into the outside of a spoon (the convex part), light is reflected out, and you get back an image that is larger and right side up.
In the diagram below, the large black arrow is the object being reflected, and the thin red arrow is the resulting reflection.
*Also, as Christina pointed out, if you look close enough (before the cross-over), even the reflection off of the concave surface will look right-side-up.
