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Reflections
reflection in a river
"As water reflects a face back to a face, so one's heart is reflected back by another."
Proverbs 27:19
SEEING IS BELIEVING
  • Only large brained social animals-such as Asian elephants, dolphins, and orangutans-can recognize their own reflections in a mirror.
  • In 1651, Peter Stuyvesant, gover nor of New Amsterdam, founded the first house of mirrors amusement park attraction based on the House of Mirrors in Versailles, France.
  • The town of Viganella, Italy, which is located in a narrow valley and gets no direct sunlight for seven weeks in the winter, installed a computer-controlled mirror in 2006 to reflect sunlight into the town square. The mirror is over 26 feet wide and 16 feet high.
MIRROR IMAGE
There are mirrors all around us-windows, rivers, glass doors, and the traditional kind of mirror you use to check your hairdo in the morning. All of these objects reflect images because their surfaces are ver y smooth. When particles of light called photons hit a smooth surface, the mirror absorbs them, then reflects other photons back to us and to our eyes. Photons that hit a rough surface would just bounce off and scatter in all directions, but those that hit a mirror's smooth surface are reflected at the same angle at which they orig inally hit the mirror. This is called reflection

Shiny metals, like aluminum, are better at reflecting images than a glass window. When a photon hits a mirror, it causes the electrons in the mirror to vibrate and give off another photon of light in the opposite direction. Metals reflect images best because their atoms share electrons with neighboring atoms, so they can send a very strong photon out. Glass doesn't share electrons very well and so the reflection isn't as bright.

Most conventional how-does-my-hair-look mirrors have three layers: a dark, protective layer on the bottom; a middle layer made of shiny aluminum; and a top layer of glass to protect the aluminum layer and keep it perfectly smooth.

ATOMIC CONNECTIONS
Metals reflect images best because their atoms interact with each other very easily. Similarly, when we relate to our fellow human being , we connect to that part of God in them. If one hurts another person, God’s image is diminished. Then again, if one brings joy to another person, God’s image is magnified and the light we send out to the world is very bright indeed.

 

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