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Topic: You are inside a cubic room (Read 1080 times) |
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alien
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I heard this riddle about 2 years ago, and it goes something like this:
You are standing in the middle of a cubic room made of mirrors. How many reflections do you see if we consider one wall?
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| « Last Edit: Dec 10th, 2005, 6:34pm by alien » |
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towr
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Re: You are inside a cubic room
« Reply #1 on: Dec 11th, 2005, 7:44am » |
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Depends on how much light there is, and how sharp you can see, and what's the lowest contrast you can distinguish, how much light is actually reflected by the mirrors, etc
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alien
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Re: You are inside a cubic room
« Reply #2 on: Dec 11th, 2005, 8:04am » |
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You have practically solved the riddle: the intended answer is that there is no light, so you see nothing.  But let us suppose that there is light - what do you think how many reflections would you see then, eh?
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| « Last Edit: Dec 11th, 2005, 8:07am by alien » |
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towr
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Re: You are inside a cubic room
« Reply #3 on: Dec 11th, 2005, 3:11pm » |
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It's hard to say; with a 3% loss of light at reflection, and a visual range of a factor million for light intensity you could potentially see up to a depth of log(1/1000000)/log(0.97)= +/- 453 reflections. Depending on the dimensions of the room, and clear air, clean mirrors, the (virtual) distance shouldn't be a problem (I think vision is sharp enough to see a person up to a few kilometers under optimal conditions).
But these are all guesstimates.
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| « Last Edit: Dec 11th, 2005, 3:14pm by towr » |
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Grimbal
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Re: You are inside a cubic room
« Reply #4 on: Dec 12th, 2005, 1:25am » |
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This is related to the line of sight problem.
You don't see an infinity of yourself as intuition might suggest. Given the size of your head and the size of the room, you should be able to find an upper bound. But it is 3D here, I don't know how it works out.
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