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Mist on the Mirror

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How Does Nature Do It?

Mist is nothing else but water. How come water spreads all over the place without being sent there? The answer is simple : when taking a bath, you add a lot of hot water vapor into the air. When the air is full of vapor, water needs to condense (to transform from the vapor phase to the liquid phase).

To condense, water looks for cold and dust, and any surface in your bathroom environment seems dirty at molecular level. Water forms little drops on the cold dirty surfaces. If you watch closely, mist doesn't only show up on the mirror, it is on the walls and on the furniture as well. But you can see it more easily on the mirror because mist changes the whole process of light reflexion.

 

In dry conditions, the light is reflected following the same angle as it arrived.

Mist on the mirror

 

When meeting a water drop, no matter how light arrives, it is reflected in all directions. Therefore, the optical behaviour of the mirror is completely changed.You see mist instead of a clear reflection.

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