Reflection

One obvious property of light is that it reflects off of surfaces. Among other things, this gives rise to the images we see in mirrors, as indicated below.

 

Figure 10.1: Image formed from reflection of light in a mirror

The reason that we see an image in a mirror as apparently coming from behind the mirror is that our eyes interpret the reflected light as originally coming from a point behind the mirror, as indicated in the figure. The image we see is upright and the same size as the original object.