>>19184967The camera is a light receptor.
Your eye is a light receptor.
Both the camera and your eye receive light the same way.
The mirror is not a light receptor.
The mirror is a light-bouncer. A reflector of very clean, non-diffuse light.
Light comes from the sun and LEDSs/globes arranged around your home.
It spreads from these direct sources by bouncing everywhere against everything.
Light travels in trillions of super-super-super-microscopic waves/particles.
Imagine a disco ball with lots of light beams reflecting off it.
Every object reacts like that when light hits it, but again, with trillions of little light beams bouncing off.
The type of surface the object possesses affects the way it bounces the light that hits it.
A rough surface will "spray" the light-beams at a greater number of angles than a smooth surface will.
This is called "diffusion" or "scattering". It "softens" any light it bounces by a certain amount.
A very smooth surface will minimize this diffusion effect, allow a light receptor (your eye or a camera) to see coherent "reflections", from vague shapes and forms, to clear pristine images. Smooth surfaces preserve the "sharpness" of the light when bouncing it away.
This is the difference between a mirror and a brick wall.
You are not seeing a real egg behind the paper in the mirror, you are seeing light that has first bounced off the real egg and is now traveling in your direction, so you see *those* direct beams as the real egg you are holding against the paper, while the beams bouncing off the egg to the side are striking the smooth surface of the mirror and bouncing outwards again.
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