Can a mirror reflect or cast a shadow?

Cage… I’m gonna think about this one for a while and get back to you… I’#m pretty sure you’re on the money though… mirrors are Very odd things!

it does, but because shadows are dark, you cannot see them in the same way that you can see the light. A shadow is absense of light, and therefore does not travel.

if by “cast” a shadow you mean whether the mirror itself has a shadow (eg when you have a light behind it) of course it does. It is a material thing, and its back is just a sheet of glass with coating.

Umm, yes, Jack, we know. He means will the reflected image, cast onto a screen, bear the shadow of the person.

What allows a mirror to cast a shadow in the dot situation is that the light has a specific point of origin, and there are specific spots on the mirror from which light cannot reflect; this guarantees certain areas on the screen where light cannot touch. What is different in the second situation, with the person, is that while the light still has a specific point of origin, it can reflect from anywhere on the mirror, so any light that manages to reach the mirror ‘behind’ the person will be reflected into the shadow, decreasing its definition. This would be impossible in an ideal situation in which all bodies except for the mirror are perfectly absorptive, and the experiment is held in a vacuum, but in reality even if we ignore ambient light the primary light will still be dispersed somewhat by the air in the room. So the shadow will be somewhat ill defined. Of course, if the light is larger than your body, then the size of the shadow will decrease until it disappears, again because there is no restriction on where on the mirror the light can reflect.

Depends. Are you in Narnia? Mordor?

Anyway, my advice is not to spend too much time looking into mirrors. You can get sucked in, you know?

@Jayne thanks very much :)