When I look in a mirror my image is reversed-left to right. Why am I not upside down as well?

Question

Think about it. Look in the mirror and raise your right hand. The image raises its left. It is reversed. Why then is it not upside down?

Answer 1

Because that's how mirrors work.

Answer 2

I agree with rth7738

Answer 3

I stopped smoking weed 10 years ago.

Answer 4

I don't know the answer, but I just wanted to tell you this was a very good question.

Answer 5

Ohh My G()*^ you must be kidding. Its a mirror image not a reversed image. If it was a reversed image your thumb would be on the other side of your hand. You want to see yourself upsidedown. Stand on your head.

Answer 6

hmmm.......

Answer 7

This is just a guess, but I think it's because your eyes are horizontally separated, rather than vertically. If you lay on your side and look in the mirror, then you'd still be left/right (body) reversed, but because your eyes are now vertically separated, you see up/down reversed instead of left/right. If your eyes were situated one over the other, then you'd see an up/down reversal in the mirror, instead of left/right.

Answer 8

It's a bit confusing to say the image raises its left hand. Let's say it raises its hand which is on the right side.

Then everything is OK because the image's head is upside and the raised hand on the right. The only axis that is reversed is the one perpendicular to the mirror's surface.

But it's a nice point. The reason why this was confusing is that our bodies are nearly symmetric to this flip, so that the image looks like a human turned towards us. If we were not so symmetric, we wouldn't think so.

Answer 9

It has to do with how we define "up" and "down" and "left" and "right".  It's not some magical thing about how mirrors only flip in one direction.  

Left and right are relative terms.  Try to describe to somebody in words what "left" is.  Do it without using a known example based on left or right.  Like you can't say that "left" is the direction of your left hand.  The answer is, you can't do it.  It's not physically or mathematically possible to define it absolutely.  You have to just pick a convention and then use it as an example for everybody.  So there really is nothing that defines left and right, except for how they are relative to everything else.  

Now, up and down are different.  In space they don't exist either.  but on earth, we define "down" as the direction to the center of the earth.  If you defined left and right like that, then they WOULDNT get flipped in a mirror.  Define "left" as the hand pointing toward the dresser.  Now look in your mirror, and you will see that the reflection is pointing to the dresser as well, and therefore that hand is the left hand.  So if you redefine left the same way that down is defined, your reflection and you are both holding out your left hand.  

Left and right are defined relative to themselves.  Up and down are defined relative to other objects.  Mirrors flip things across a plane relative to themselves, but keep the same orientation relative to other objects, because all objects are flipped equally.  

If you want to really get confused, look at text in a mirror.  Hard to read because it's backwards, right?  now turn it on its side, so that its reading from down to up.  Still backwards, but reading down to up.  But both your text and the mirror text are reading down to up.  So it's backwards, even though its both going down to up.  Think about that one.  It's not really flipped left to right or up to down.  Its flipped across a plane.