Make: Technology on Your Time Volume 18

Toys, Tricks, & Teasers

By Donald Simanek

Reflections on an Illusion

An illusion that never ceases to fascinate is the mirror-produced real image. It can appear so real that you’ll reach out to grasp it, but your fingers close only on thin air.

Nineteenth-century books of science recreations often included the “phantom bouquet” (Figure A), which produced an upright real image of a bouquet of flowers hidden in a box below. The flowers had to be upside down because the concave mirror inverts the image.

Fig. A: The phantom bouquet, from George M. ...