Magic Mirrors and Light

[P4 Science and up - Light]

Kept you waiting, huh?

You often see questions about light passing through transparent, or translucent objects. But what about this? How do you suppose light passes through a mirror and onto the other side?

Light from the mirror passing through a translucent paper would appear a bit foggy and unfocused, but this is probably your rare few experiences with a translucent object that's intentionally patterned to create shapes.

By intentionally changing the way a mirror is formed, it becomes possible to stencil such images on the surface of the mirrors themselves, and notably, the image does not have to match the picture at the back perfectly, because the image on the mirror is a different thing entirely from the plastic it's shining on.