| Due to any reasons where the view of a person is limited, then mirrors are very useful. One or several mirrors and sometimes slightly convex mirrors for expanding the field of vision are fitted in each automobile and on road bicycles.
Fixed convex mirrors allow in averting collisions and accidents on roads and in cramped parking lots.
In video observation systems, mirrors provide a view in multiple directions from a single video camera.
Translucent mirrors (semitransparent):
Translucent mirror in a light beam prism splitter
Translucent mirrors are widely used in optical devices (lasers, mirror-prism viewfinders, Teleprompters, etc.).
Sometimes, translucent mirrors are called “mirror glasses” or “on-sided glasses”. Such glasses are used for hidden surveillance over people (with an aim to check behavior or espionage), in this case, spy in dark premises or as in an object of surveillance in illuminated premises. The working principle of a mirror glass is that the spy, located in dull premises, is not visible against the bright reflection. Translucent mirrors, which pass light towards one side and do not pass towards the second side, do not exist – this would have been Maxwell’s Demon.
Use in military operations:
Mirrors are used in modern thermonuclear weapons for the focusing of radiation from the igniting fuse and creating conditions to start the thermonuclear process of synthesis.
Mirrors in folklore, superstitions, myths and artistic creations:
The mirror reflection had a very strong effect on people, who for the first time had the possibility to view the “Second I”. They often believed that someone else is reflected in the mirror and then believed that the soul of the person is reflected in the mirror.
Large number of guess-work, ceremonies and prejudices (for example, it is not good to view the self in a broken mirror or the hanging of mirrors in the house for 9 days after the death of person) is connected with this. |
