Mirror and Water Images Questions and Answers

Answer: D

The letter without the same water image is W.

A water image flips a letter upside down (a reflection in a horizontal line). Letters that are symmetric about a horizontal axis look the same after this flip: C, D and H are all such letters, as are B, E, I, K, O and X.

W is symmetric only about a vertical axis, so its water image looks like an M, not a W.

Answer: C

The mirror image is option (c).

APPROPRIATE has eleven letters. Reflected in a mirror at the side, the order of the letters is reversed, giving E, T, A, I, R, P, O, R, P, P, A, and each letter is flipped left to right, so the R and P are turned the other way.

Option (c) has the right order of letters. Option (a) puts the O before the R after the I, option (b) puts the O just after the R and before the P, and option (d) puts P before R in the middle, so each has two letters in the wrong order.

Answer: A

The water image is (A), the word turned upside down with its letters still in the order T-R-A-N-S-P-A-R-E-N-T.

A water image is a reflection in a horizontal surface below the object, so it flips the word top to bottom only. Left and right are unchanged: the letters stay in the same order, but each one appears upside down.

(B) is the word unchanged, not an image at all. (C) reverses the order of the letters and flips each one left to right, which is what a mirror held at the side would do, not water below. (D) is a mirror image of the same kind with the letter E missing, so it is wrong on two counts.

Answer: D

The mirror image of FUNFLIPS is shown in option (D).

A mirror image (lateral inversion) does two things at once: the letters appear in the reverse order, so the word reads S, P, I, L, F, N, U, F from the left, and every letter is itself flipped left to right. For FUNFLIPS this means the S and P, the L, both F's and the N all appear back to front, while I and U look the same.

Option (D) is the only figure in which every letter is flipped, including the L, which becomes a reversed L, and both F's. Options (A), (B) and (C) have the letters in the right reversed order but leave the L unflipped, and (A) and (C) also leave the last F unflipped, so each is only a partial reflection of the word.

Answer: A

The actual time is 08.45.

For a time seen in a mirror, the real time is found by subtracting the mirror time from 12:00 (or 11:60):

\[ 11{:}60 - 3{:}15 = 8{:}45 \]

Check: the hands at 3:15 point to the right side of the dial, and the mirror swaps left and right, so the real hands point to the left side, which is where they are at 8:45. 03.15 repeats the mirror reading, and 09.15 reflects only the hour hand.

Answer: C

The actual time is 12:20 O'clock.

A clock and its mirror image add up to 12:00 (when the hands are read as times between 1 and 12). Subtract the mirror time from 11:60.

\[ 11{:}60 - 11{:}40 = 0{:}20 \text{, that is, } 12{:}20 \]

Check: at 12:20 the hour hand is just past 12 and the minute hand at 4; reflected, the minute hand points to 8 and the hour hand just before 12, which reads 11:40. 1:20 and the other times do not reflect to 11:40.