Fun to Imagine | 4: How Mirrors Turn You Inside Out

Why do mirrors invert a reflection from right to left but not up to down? This is just one of the questions that Professor Richard Feynman answers in the fourth of his series of chats about the way the world really functions. He also dissects the eye (painlessly) to describe how sight works.

Feynman was appointed to the panel that investigated the Space Shuttle Challenger disaster. During the hearing, he famously called for a glass of ice water, which he used to demonstrate how the rubbery O-rings that were meant to form a critical seal in the spacecraft's rocket boosters lost their ability to spring back into shape at low temperatures. Feynman later stated that Nasa had 'exaggerated the reliability of the Space Shuttle to the point of fantasy'.