Infinity Mirrors

an infinity mirror consists of two mirrors facing each other with a border of Lights between them images of the lights bounce back and forth repeatedly between the two mirrors to create a series of images of the lights that slowly decrease in both size and brightness this creates the illusion that the images retreat towards infinity hence the name the front mirror is only partially reflective allowing some of the light from the reflections to pass through so they can be seen the distortion seen here are from the plastic mirrors not being perfectly flat and the holding frames not being true squares to explore them I built this deconstructed infinity mirror where the front reflector light ring and back reflector aren't connected this lets them be moved relative to each other to see how doing so changes the reflections appearances first up we'll slide the front mirror forward this creates pairs of images of the light ring with wider and wider spaces between them this also shows how important it is to keep the mirrors parallel otherwise the reflections will Bend one way or the other next we'll pull the rear mirror backwards which produces the same effect if both the front and the rear mirrors are pulled apart double rows of lights appear first followed by the pair's splitting into equally spaced single light rings because the mirrors aren't perfect each reflection loses some brightness for any given set of mirrors there's a finite number of reflections visible this number is the same whether the mirrors are close or far apart one advantage of wider spacing is that the reflections appear to recede to a much greater distance the downside is that this makes the infinity mirror thicker reducing the apparent magical effect if the sides are open like this one it makes the infinite dancing mirror effect possible children love this while working with this infinity mirror I learned several useful things first that if at all possible avoid PLAs stick mirrors both of mine came with slight warps which didn't completely go away when mounted on wood frames these warps distort the images second the two-way mirror used in the front was made by adhering a layer of aluminized Mylar to a clear plastic sheet the mylar film from its manufacturing processes isn't perfectly flat it has streaks and pits in it and these also distort the images lastly and probably most importantly plastic is great at picking up and holding static electric charges which are so effective that they pull dust in out of the air coat the surfaces and make the image look well sort of grey if I had to do it all over again I'd use glass mirrors specifically first-surface mirrors so that the reflections don't have to pass through a layer of glass before reflecting this causes secondary reflections and faster dimming of the images the problem with this is that such mirrors are hard to find and extremely expensive still for the ultimate infinity mirror effect it might be worth it I hope you found this video helpful for more videos and articles about hundreds of other subjects please visit my main website at Wayne's dis and.com thanks for watching

Channel: Wayne Schmidt

Views: 245,862

Keywords: infinity mirrors, how an infinity mirror works, how to design an infinity mirror, how to make an infinity mirror

Id: SswNEEhVm2E

Length: 3min 32sec (212 seconds)

Published: Mon Jun 22 2020