Millions of Vsauce faithfuls have continually headed to the man’s YouTube page for the last few years, and in his latest video, the famous vlogger sort-of takes a look at his audience. His newest video is called “Inside a Spherical Mirror,” and it gets into some hypothetical situations this time around, explaining what would happen if a mirror was spherical in a room rather than a rectangular entity on a wall.
In the video, Vsauce uses the idea of a spherical room to explain what happens when light hits a mirror (some light reflects off and some is absorbed), what a person’s face would look like when gazing into a spherical mirror from different distances (it would get huge near the center and would eventually flip upside down), and even explains the mere-exposure effect (whereupon a person prefers his or her image in the mirror to that of a camera, thanks to constantly looking at the reverse of what her or she normally looks like). It’s all fascinating stuff and it is better explained by the vlogger than a mere blogger like myself.
The video also explains exactly how mirrors work and how a person’s image hitting a mirror is always exactly half of a person’s actual size. I wouldn’t have believed the latter claim unless I’d actually seen it. In the video, Vsauce traces the edges of a phone up close next to mirror and then makes the same tracing from a distance. Shockingly, the two traces are the same size!
I generally like the vlogger a little more when he’s talking about facts that are more directly related to evidence we can see rather than visualize or when he’s talking about human behavior. In the past, he’s covered topics including why humans play games and why human being kiss, and each effort has been a wonderful mix of mind-blowing concepts and astute rambles. Watching through four or five of his clips in a row, you can really tell how and why he’s built one of the most devoted and passionate fanbases on YouTube. Sure, the number of views on each effort vary a bit, but his truest enthusiasts give every single one a chance, many on the actual days the clips are released.
If you are into the man’s less behavior-oriented stuff, you can check out the video explaining how life on Earth would continue even after the death of the sun.
