Dear #physics #optics nerds: can someone point me to a video that explains exactly how mirrors work? I particular, how does a "reflected" ("reemitted", although it's actually a electron going back to a lower energy state?) photon know the _angle_ at which it should go?
Writing all this makes me wonder: AFAIK the frequency at which a photon is emitted when an electron goes back to a lower energy state depends on the "size" of that jump. Does that mean that mirrors can't reproduce all colors?
@mdione the key thing with mirrors is they have a metal reflecting surface - in a metal electrons don’t have simple orbital energies like in individual atoms, but form a continuum of energies and so can respond to a very wide range of light wavelengths.
@apsmith glass is not metal but it's partially reflective. It's not the same?
@mdione @apsmith The reflection from glass arises in a slightly different way. Glass is a dielectric, which means when light travels in the material it causes the atoms to sort of stretch a bit, and this interaction between the material and light causes the speed of light in the material to be slower. When light crosses the boundary between two materials with different speeds of light, the beam of light will bend (refraction) and some of it will be reflected back (similar to a mirror). This is the same reason you can see reflections at the surface of water (another dielectric).
