Question

Car rear view mirrors carry a warning message that 'objects in the rear view mirror are closer than they appeer'. Why do you think this is so?

Answer 1

Car rear view mirrors are convex mirrors. In a convex mirror, the image of an object appears small, therefore, our brain recognises the size of the image and tries to calculate the distance of the actual object on this basis. As we know, objects far away appear smaller, therefore, when we see smaller images of the objects in the mirror, our brain thinks that the objects are far away than they actually are. In other words, 'objects in the rear view mirror are closer than they appear'.