When going through life, you will undoubtedly experience many things that you just don’t understand.
In the past, you often had to either figure it out yourself or just ignore the information and move on.
Fortunately, today we have access to the Internet and can find answers to almost anything.
That is exactly what Stefan Laegaard Anderston did when he couldn’t figure something out.
While tucking his daughter into bed at night, he noticed something odd on her wall. It was an upside-down house. No, his daughter didn’t draw an upside-down house, but it was projected there.
A little more investigation found that the house was his neighbor’s, which made things even weirder.
And on top of that, he had the shades drawn on the window.
After he tried and failed to figure it out on his own, he turned to the Internet. On Facebook he posted:
“I’m sure that some of you fine gentlemen and/or gentlewomen know the answer to this ginormous mystery, that has my head spinning. Last night, as I was tucking my daughter into bed in our new house, this mirror image of the neighbours house showed up as a projection of sorts on our bedroom wall. I have absolutely no idea, how this happened, but I am hoping some of you can help understand this mystery.”
Not surprisingly, the people on the Internet were quick to explain that what he was seeing was what is known as a pinhole camera, or a camera obscura.
The answer came from commenter John Tougas, who said:
“So, having the window blocked off like that effectively makes it a pinhole camera, or camera obscura. The light reflecting off the building comes through the window, which is acting like a lens, and projects onto the wall. Very early experiments in photography used similar arrangements.”
How interesting.
So, in this case, having the shades drawn is actually what caused the reflection of the home (inverted) to shine onto the window.
That must have been quite a sight to see.
If you are interested in seeing more about how pinhole cameras actually work, it is explained well in this quick video:
Another one of life’s little mysteries solved by the Internet.
I guess it is good for some things, anyway.
If you thought that was interesting, you might like to read about a second giant hole has opened up on the sun’s surface. Here’s what it means.