Today Yael and Don discuss mirrors.

Yael和Don今天談的是鏡子。

Y: Mirror mirror on the wall, who's the fairest of them--

鏡子，鏡子，誰是世界上最美的人？

D: Watcha doing?

你在干什么？

Y: I was, um, calibrating the surface smoothness of this mirror.

恩。。我在校準(zhǔn)這面鏡子表面的平整度。

D: I see.

我知道。

Y: Did you know that in order for a mirror to work properly it has to be perfectly smooth?

你知不知道只有表面光滑的鏡子才能正常使用。

D: Why's that?

怎么這么說？

Y: Well, a mirror is basically something that reflects light, right?

鏡子基本上都能反光對吧？

D: Right.

對。

Y: When light hits something, some of the light is reflected, some absorbed, and some passes through.

當(dāng)光線照到某些東西的時候，有些光被反射，有些光被吸收，還有些光直接穿過去。

D: So for a mirror to produce a clear image it has to reflect as much of the light as possible, and in order to do that it has to be smooth.

所以說，鏡子反射的光越多，它所形成的圖像就會越清晰。要是想做到這點(diǎn)，鏡子的表面就是越光滑越好。

Y: Exactly. A warped mirror scatters and diffuses light, making the image it produces look deformed. But a smooth mirror reflects without distortion.

確實(shí)是。一面扭曲的鏡子會發(fā)生散射和漫散射作用，使得所形成的圖像變了形。而一面光滑的鏡子經(jīng)過反射作用而不會失真。

D: Which is what makes it possible for you to stand in front of the mirror and preen.

哪種鏡子更適合你站在前面打扮自己呢？

Y: I was not preening!

我不是在打扮。

D: Right. But there's nothing wrong with preening, you know. People have been admiring themselves in mirrors for a long time. Take the Greeks and Romans. They loved looking at

themselves, although they only had highly polished pieces of bronze, tin, and silver. Their descendants were even more vain, so in 16th century Venice mirror makers discovered the technique of backing a piece of glass with a reflecting metal composed of tin and mercury, producing a much clearer reflection. That technique is still in practice today, although now we use a thin layer of molten aluminum or silver sprayed onto the back of a piece of glass in a vacuum to achieve premium smoothness.

好。但你知道的，就算是在打扮也沒問題的。人們總是喜歡在鏡子前自戀一會兒。拿希臘人和羅馬人來說，盡管他們只有零碎的打磨好的青銅鏡，錫鏡和銀鏡，但他們?nèi)匀皇呛軔壅甄R子。他們的后代更加自負(fù)，所以16世紀(jì)的威尼斯鏡制造商發(fā)明了一項(xiàng)技術(shù)，它可以將由錫和汞構(gòu)成的反射金屬和一片片玻璃拼接到一塊兒。但這項(xiàng)技術(shù)現(xiàn)今還在應(yīng)用。但我們現(xiàn)在更多的都是在真空中將一層薄薄的熔融鋁或銀噴到玻璃后面以保證溢價平衡。

Y: Thanks for the history lesson.

謝謝你給我上了節(jié)歷史課。

D: You're welcome. And by the way . . .

不客氣。對了順便說一下……

Y: Yes?

恩？

D: You are the fairest of them all.

你是世界上最美的人。

Y: Oh Don.

哦Don...