• Question: What colour is a mirror?

    Asked by crouchingmurloc to Ben, Dave, Ed, Sam, Susana on 19 Jun 2013.
    • Photo: Ed Lowe

      Ed Lowe answered on 19 Jun 2013:

      I don’t know, what are you holding in front of it? 🙂

      More seriously, it depends what it’s made of – most mirrors are silvered glass, but there are special ones in some synchrotron beamlines made of gold, so they are gold coloured.

    • Photo: David Briggs

      David Briggs answered on 19 Jun 2013:

      Silver. The actual mirror is silver, but the light it reflects can be anything.

    • Photo: Susana Teixeira

      Susana Teixeira answered on 19 Jun 2013:

      Apparently the most common type of mirrors is slightly green… because they do not reflect all wavelengths in the same way, they reflect the green zone more efficiently. This is best seen if you put a mirror in front of the other, it accentuates the effect!

      Otherwise the mirror will mostly look to us as the same colour of whatever is in front of it!

Comments

  • Photo: rhooper821

    rhooper821 commented on :

    Apparently, a mirror is slightly green due to the amount of light it absorbs, green light being the least it absorbs. You may have noticed this if you’ve studied a mirror tunnel. The further away the the ‘end’ of the tunnel reflection seems, the dimmer and greener it gets. Apparently… ;). Couldn’t resist throwing in my own answer :D! The video below pretty much just describes what i just said in more detail.