let’s reflect on this

fun fact! mirrors reflect each color equally, except for green. if you have ever seen a mirror perfectly aligned in front of another mirror, a.k.a. an infinite mirror, you can look through it and see that it becomes greener and greener. therefore, mirrors are technically green!

holy shit

The glass is greener over here. Not a typo.

If you look edgewise through a sheet of glass you see that it’s green because of iron impurities (Google for it). Reducing the iron reduces the green.

Perfectly aligning mirrors to multiply reflections also multiplies the apparent thickness of the glass, and the green tint becomes more apparent the “deeper” each reflection seems to be.

Science is like history: it was never this interesting at school. :-)

Yep! And this is because - I’m sorry to say - mirrors are not a unique or separate substance with magical properties. Mirrors are silvered glass. They have two colors: the color of the silver, and the color of the glass. The “silver” doesn’t have to be silver, though it usually is because mirrors are traditionally made with silver nitrate, because it’s a whitish metal. You can have mirrors silvered in gold or black or red. You take literally any piece of glass, pour a coating of silver on it, seal it, and call it a mirror.

You have to seal it because otherwise it tarnishes and spots. Even though the glass protects it from air, the silver oxidizes just like any other silver, which is why antique mirrors have that funky age-spotted look.

Mirrors used in science are usually pure clear glass with no impurities (so the glass has no color) and are silvered in gold or aluminum, so they are white or gold. A warm-toned mirror would have a pink glass and would make things have a rose-gold look. Phryne Fisher, in the books, has a mirror with pink glass.

(Mirrors silvered in silver - that is, most mirrors you’ve seen - are probably faintly grey from the silver and faintly green from the cheap glass, but it doesn’t need to concern you at all - even if you noticed a strong color, you’re often so used to looking in them that your brain edits out any discrepancy - like how your nose doesn’t get in the way of your vision even though it’s right in front of your eyes all of the time.)

My grandmother had a mirror that was silvered in gold. It was a little disconcerting. The silver in mirrors is why vampires don’t have reflections. (And why the cutlery at Castle Dracula was made of gold.)

IS THAT TRUE ABOUT THE REFLECTIONS BECAUSE IF SO THAT CHANGES ABSOLUTELY EVERYTHING???

@thebibliosphere FYI

Already ahead of you on this one ;)

It’s also where the whole “vampires can’t be photographed” Post-Modern Magick thing came from (silver nitrate and all that).

That’s how you spot if a post-2000 fantasy/scifi writer’s done their homework on vampire lore; they can be photographed digitally.

A vampire seeing their image for the first time in centuries because of the first digital camera tho.

A modern vampire with the most high tech house. A bathroom ‘mirror’ set up to a screen connected to a camera to ‘reflect’ them.

I feel a old vampire who is shown a camera on a phone would take so many selfies.

This just got more and more awesome bless

Am I the only one stuck staring at my nose for like two minutes when I realized that it was “right there”?

Every time this post comes around in the version with my additions I feel super excited because it takes soooo many crazy turns,

But this comment is definitely the cutest

So if a vampire found a mirror that was gold instead it’d have a reflection. GOOD TO KNOW.