Mirrors are one of the coolest things that pretty much everyone has in their homes. They’re incredibly useful, somewhat spooky and can be used to make animals freak out for TikTok videos. Not to mention, they’ve birthed practically an entire genre of physical comedy.
Leave it at that, and I think we’d all give them their fair due. However, far beyond serving the simple purpose of looking back at you or an advancing car driven by a man on the brink of insanity, they’ve also provided some utility that doesn’t immediately come to mind.
Flashlights
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I’ll start with a very basic, but oft-overlooked mirror use: that of a flashlight. What sets them apart from the olden days of padding around in your nightgown with a flickering lantern is their ability to focus light on a single point of interest, something made possible by the use of a mirror surrounding the light source at its head.
Firestarters
Though they’re seeing some renewed popularity as a survival tool, solar lighters have been around for a while, like the vintage example above. They work pretty simply: They’re a parabolic mirror that focuses the reflected light onto a single, spicy point, one that helpfully has a holder positioned on top of it. Pack some kindling into that specific space, and you’ll see the same power that murdered many ants at the hands of children with a magnifying glass.
Medical Pain Relief for Amputees
One of the most fascinating uses of mirrors, and a testament to just how much our brain still can’t totally figure them out, is mirror therapy for amputees. Specifically, it’s been proven to be a cure for phantom pain in amputees. Putting their non-amputated limb into a mirror box fools their brain into thinking it’s still operating both limbs, and it can allow them to “unclench” muscles that their senses tell them are still engaged, despite, well, not being there anymore.
Mirror therapy was invented by Dr. Vilayanur S. Ramachandran, though most people were probably introduced to it via Dr. Gregory House.
Measuring the Distance to the Moon
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Did you know there’s a human-made mirror on the surface of the moon?
No, Neil Armstrong didn’t drop his compact touching up for Stanley Kubrick’s cameras. It was placed there by the crew of Apollo 11, along with the famous flag. The purpose of this specific, very special mirror, known as the laser ranging retroflector, was to let NASA precisely measure how far away the moon was from Earth. Getting the mirror on the moon was hard, but getting the measurement is simple: NASA fires a laser at the mirror, and then measures the return signal.
Doing Drugs, Allegedly
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I’m a good boy who’s never done anything wrong in his whole life. Still, I’ve seen enough movies to know that, for whatever reason, it’s the preferred surface for chopping up the old Himalayan honk-dust.
Googling “why do people use mirrors for drugs” like I’m some moon-faced Midwestern acting student who just got back from his first Hollywood party, it seems it’s because they’re perfectly flat with no holes for anything to get lost in, and make it easy to check that you didn’t leave any snow on the sidewalk, so to speak.