First off, it most certainly DOES depend on the orientation of the plates, unless of course there is no distance between the plates. The farther the distance between the plates, the farther the distance between the plates, the greater the effect. 2 pained windows are usually about 1/2" gap, so there is definitely an effect. Don't believe me? Grab a flashlight and find a 2 pained window. Orient the window between you and the flashlight one way, then try the other. Make sure the part of the window you are viewing the flashlight through is the same spot. I'll be anything the reflections will be on the other side. If it were strictly the angle between plates that mattered, the reflection positions would not change at all. Naos, I'd bet if you could run that simulation with the initial line going down, the lines would all shoot out the other way.Chris Peterson wrote:Naos wrote:The fact is that the direction of multiple images seen through a pair of glass plates it completely independent of the orientation of those plates with respect to the source and observer. It depends only on the orientation of the two plates with respect to each other. If they are parallel, there will effectively be no displacement of images (or rather, a single displacement that manifests as a slight fuzziness of the edges). If they are not parallel, the displacement of the images will be in the direction that the plates converge. In practice, with typical double glazed panes, the direction of displacement will vary as you look through different areas of the glass- something that is completely consistent with the images presented. Since the camera was handheld, each shot was through a slightly different region of the window, and as a result each shows a slightly different relationship between the reflected images.
In addition, if the window panes were not perfectly parallel, and local flaws in the window were causing the reflections, in all likelyhood each picture would have a completely different reflection exhibited. One might have them going left, another right, another up, another down... but they're all in the same direction, simply with differing distances.
Windows act like half mirrors. When light hits it, it goes one of two ways: straight through, or reflects at an angle such that a line perpendicular to the window will bisect the angle between the incoming light, and light leaving. If the incoming angle is 45 deg to the window, it will bounce off at 45 deg in the other direction. If the light comes in almost parallel to the window, it will reflect almost parallel to the window. at a 90 degree angle, the light will bounce right back from where it came.
That all being said, I reiterate, the only two possibilities for the window causing the reflections is 1) the window goes close left to far right, or 2) there is an incredibly large angle difference between the two panes, though I believe it would be so large that it would constitute two separate windows, and there would be so much distortion you probably wouldn't see through the window.
I think green1 was on to something with his little picture montage on page 6. Maybe there was some sort of of heat gradient over the bay caused by cold water in the bay that when the sun came up slowly disapated due to the suns radiation? If the lake caused the temperature differences, it could have cause a sort of dome shaped boundary layer over the bay, which might account for the slight curve in the propagation of reflections. If that were true, the reflections would also happen between the suns reflection on the horizon and the viewer, and could account for all effects that a 2 pained window would cause (clouds reflecting in each instance, the horizon reflection, etc).
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experiment a try:
