Video Transcript
(1.2s) Hello. Do you know how mirages work?
When you hear of a mirage, you may think of someone walking through a desert and it looks like there's a pool of water in front of them. But as they get closer and closer, it's not real. It's an illusion. And you may actually have seen a mirage if you're driving or walking around on a hot day and you see a shimmer on the ground in front of you. It looks like there's some water or light or, you know, the air is kind of rippling. And so it's actually not related to water at all. A mirage is caused by the fact that light moves differently through either hot air or cold air.
(1.3s) So if the ground is hot, some sunlight comes directly from the sun into your eyes. It's a straight line going straight into your eyes, while some of it that's heading towards the ground, when it passes from the cool air towards the hot air coming up from really hot ground, that difference in the cool and hot air actually bends the light, kind of like the light going from air to glass. And so some of that light that would have just hit the ground bends up and goes into your eyes. But your brain thinks that the light is coming straight from something. So it assumes that there's something with light coming off of it on the ground. And that's why you see a shimmer or something that looks like water. So it's not really there. And it is light from the sun, but it's just being bent by the difference between cool and hot air. All right. Hope you enjoyed.
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