Light In A Mirrored Room Would light keep on reflecting forever if put into a mirrored room?

[matto 0]

I was just thinking. About light. Suppose there existed a room that was made up of ONLY walls, and there existed nothing except pure air inside the room, and there was a single hole in which it was one of those 1-sided mirrors (light goes in, but not out). If you shined a laser, or any light, into the hole, would the light keep on reflecting on and off the mirrors forever? I believe it would. What do you guys think?My reasoning for thinking that it would is that there are a certain amount of options. 1) The light is absorbed by the air (which is conceivable after a long amount of time of reflection, i suppose...) and the air is heated; 2) The light is absorbed by the mirrors, and the mirrors are heated (but should not happen if they are real mirrors); 3) The light somehow exits the room and is absorbed by other stuff; 4) the light keeps on reflecting.I don't thinkt hat the first three would happen, and that leaves only the fourth one left. Perhaps it wouldn't reflect FOREVER, as the air would probably absorb it eventually... but, if that's the case, then what would be the case if there was NOTHING inside the room except the light that enters it? What if it was a vacuum, with literally NOTHING inside it? Assuming that is possible, then it is even less arguable that the light could do anything else besides keep reflecting.What are all your opinions? Keep in mind, I'm just thinking. I haven't done much research at all in this field, but it crossed my mind and interested me.

[Moolkye 0]

Nice thought. I liek this weird thinkign kind of stuff. I think that the light would be reflected until it ran out of space to be reflected by. Meaning that it would bounce back and forth until every inch of the mirrors occupied space to reflect from. And it would be bright as heck. But how would we know?

[Cerebral Stasis 0]

Light in a mirrored room would not reflect indefinately, since the light would lose energy (meaning it would be converted to heat energy) and spread out every time it bounced, so, no, it wouldn't continue on indefinately.

[tdm 0]

Interesting one there. Ive tought that many a time and im geussing it would go on for a long time, not forever. If you find out what really would happen please keep me informed.

[Reaper 0]

that is quite a cool idea but i think it would stop reflecting eventually as from what a can gather light is made up of waves and how long it would carry one reflecting would be dictated by the initial frequency of the light the higher the frequency the longer it would carry on reflecting but it would stop eventually. But yeah good idea about that

[tidewell 0]

Well every theory should point to yes. if you shine a light in a mirror it shines back, so why wouldn't it continue to shine? Its simple really, it's just people like to think about it so they get confused about things like that.

[epox 0]

hey dude, you really put my brain to work, nice thinking, i think in ideal conditions the light will reflect forever, like in the emptiness.

[Helium 0]

It won't keep reflecting, mirrors don't reflect every bit of light, they absorb light, just like any object although it isn't much in the end there would be no energy left.

[brainless 0]

If there is air in this room, the light would eventually be absorbed (i.e. the light's energy would be passed to the atoms/molecules which make up the air, thereby the temperature in this room would increase).Using a perfect vacuum and perfect mirrors, the light would be trapped between the mirrors. There would, however, be now way to measure exactly how much light there is in this room since this would require a certain amount of light to leave this room.This thinking reminds me of Schroedinger's cat: During the initial phase of research on radioactivity, a guy named Schroder put a cat and some radioactive material (enough to kill a living being) into a box and closed it.How do we know whether the cat is still alive after a minute, an hour, a day, a week, a month? ok, the latter ones maybe guessed by the amount of food the cat had...

[Justin S. 0]

Well that is very confusing I wouldn't know the answer to it lol.

[scotty_knows 0]

Unfortunately, that could [probably] never happen.1) I don't believe that ANYTHING is 100% opaque (There are always small holes that can let light through).2) One way mirrors aren't all that one way. Only the side with the most light is a mirror, most likely, that would be outside, while inside, it would be almost as clear as glass.3) As many people have said, the light would eventually dissipate into heat.I love logic like that, though. It activates your prefrontal cortex (as Brain Age would say).

[Radioactive 0]

Funny. That was one of the problems I used to have during a lot of time. But my question was a little different (it should go back to the same theory, though).We have two mirrors close to each other. One that would let us see through like matto stated, and other that were reflecting the one we were watching through. What king of image would we get? Sort of a black infinite, effects like the ones that appear when you point your webcam to your monitor and display what the cam is seeing, resulting in an infinite framing of the cam view (try it!), etc..Nice mind-twister btw:) but the best way to discover is to actually try.

Edited May 23, 2006 by Radioactive (see edit history)

[Cerebral Stasis 0]

If one had a vacuume with mirrors that were absolutely perfect, it may, in theory, be possible for the light to reflect forever (I assume if one could look inside, although that would release some light, one would simply see the same image being reflected back until it was too small to see, like what happens when you put two mirrors together). Of course, since any light that would leave would mean the amount of light inside would decrease, one could never actually see what's inside, so essentially, it's a loaded question (like the question "can God create a rock too heavy for himself to lift?"). In theory, though, it's possible, but only if there was no light absorbed either through air molecules nor through the molecules in the mirror.

[gaurdro 0]

Here is some fun physics. The same problem came about with the idea of black-body radiation. A black body is a perfect absorber of energy and through about five textbooks of physics it also must be a perfect emitter. the setup described at the beginning of this post is very similar to that of what we use to simulate black body radiation.The only change is that the box was evacuated and light was shined in an actual hole in the side of the box. At different temperatures there is different proportions of frequencys emitted. if you could find a perfect mirror you could make light bounce around indefinitely if the box is completely evacuated. Only certain frequencys of light will actually be reflected because a mirror dictates that the light reflected has a 'node' at the surface of the mirror. a node is a place that there is no change is position. in this case the electric and magnetic fields are both zero in a standing wave on a string there is no vertical motion. with a substance in the box there would be dispersion of light and some energy of the light would be lost in colliding with the air molecules which would then heat up the box. this is not good given that you could easily transfer 1000 watts of energy using a good halogen light bulb. another loss would occur as does in high intensity light. In potentially high density photon regions it is possible that two photons could collide (it's been proven they can and do!!) and in doing so would create a particle, most probably a electron or other charged particle. an anti particle would also be created( conservation of charge). the antiparticle would annihilate something in the wall of the box and the electron( or other charged particle) would act as a free radical and destroy compounds in the wall of the box. This occurs quite frequently but it's effect on let's say a spot light is so small that in a thousand years no visible damage would occur. it is quite a different story inside the box. all the damage would occur to a relatively small area (aka: the inside of the box) instead of being able to be spread out over the atmosphere and subject.

[kurtis 0]

Nice thought. I liek this weird thinkign kind of stuff. I think that the light would be reflected until it ran out of space to be reflected by. Meaning that it would bounce back and forth until every inch of the mirrors occupied space to reflect from. And it would be bright as heck. But how would we know?

I completly agree with this statement, we will never know, because there would be lot's of variables, like what type of mirrors, what temperature, space, etc. and where would the light bulb go into the room and scientists wouldn't be able to record results cause it would cause a system failure.

I Guess I can attempt to fill a room with mirrors and a light bulb.

But, I think that if u put a light bulb in a room of mirrors and leave it on, the room with get hella bright, and you wouldn't see anything cause it would be so bright.

Thats just oen mans oppinion, so post your oppinions, before this "hot topic" is overloaded with posts.