You’ll need

  • 1 large mirror to stand or sit in front of
  • 1 portable mirror bigger than your head

What to do

Warning!

Mirrors are made from glass and can break.

  1. Place the 2 mirrors facing each other about a metre apart. This creates an infinity mirror.
  2. Stand in between them and look into one of the mirrors. You will see many images of yourself going on forever! You might have to adjust the smaller mirror a bit to get it to work.
  3. Now place the second mirror so that it is perpendicular to the bigger mirror. That means to make an ‘L’ with the 2 mirrors. (Make sure the edge where they meet is vertical – up and down.)
  4. Look at the big mirror and close one eye. Which side is the closed eye on in the mirror?
  5. Now face the line where the 2 mirrors meet and close the same eye. Which side is the closed eye on in the mirror?
  6. If you can see your whole body in the mirrors, experiment with your whole body. What happens when you lift a leg away from your body?

Questions to ask

How many images of yourself can you see in the infinity mirror?

Can you make the top of your head big in the mirror? Try moving further away from or closer to the mirror.

Can you move so you only see one eye in the mirror?

What's happening

Mirrors are made of very smooth glass. Because they are so smooth, they reflect light without making the picture go blurry. When you stand in front of a mirror, you see a reflection of yourself, but reversed.

Infinity mirrors work because the 2 mirrors keep reflecting images back at each other. Each reflection will be smaller than the previous one. Eventually, you won’t be able to see yourself – you’ll be too small!

When you face the join between the perpendicular mirrors, the light has to bounce off both mirrors to come back to you. This mean it gets reversed, then reversed again. So the image you see is not reversed!