Reflections !!

“Reflection”   -  the noun means :  the throwing back by a body or surface of light, heat, or sound without absorbing it. Eg.  "the reflection of light" 

When one tries to remove the vessel used for burning milk for making good coffee, one touches the vessel – the hot vessel burns hand – the immediate learning is – touching a vessel on a hot stove burns ! – the coffee may still taste good !!   Common  brain makes the connection almost simultaneously. There’s little need for reflection because the “hot vessel =burn” connection is one that  mind makes almost immediately. Similarly, driving two-wheeler in  bad weather and going way too fast might result in skidding, spinning off and losing control, giving undesirable results – there is instant lesson in that too.  Academic learning however is seldom that obvious. 

Reflections are one’s thoughts about a particular subject. After days of reflection some  write back. Reflection is a deeper form of learning that allows us to retain every aspect of any experience, be it personal or professional — why something took place, what the impact was, whether it should happen again — as opposed to just remembering that it happened. 

A famous quote reads :  “We don’t learn from experience. We learn from reflecting on experience.” Reformers have been talking about the importance of reflection in the learning process since ages.  Another thinker equates the learning process as “Input-Process-Output-Reflect” and notes that without reflection, it is very difficult to have genuine learning. If the goal is not merely coverage but actual learning, than reflection is no longer optional – it’s an essential piece to transition a classroom from “covering material” to being “focused on learning”. 

Reflective practice is, in its simplest form, thinking about or reflecting on what you do. It is closely linked to the concept of learning from experience, in that you think about what you did, and what happened, and decide from that what you would do differently next time. Thinking about what has happened is part of being human. However, the difference between casual ‘thinking’ and ‘reflective practice’ is that reflective practice requires a conscious effort to think about events, and develop insights into them. 

Before concluding, in Mathematics, a reflection is a mapping from a Euclidean space to itself that is an isometry with a hyperplane as a set of fixed points; this set is called the axis or plane  of reflection. For example the mirror image of the small Latin letter p for a reflection with respect to a vertical axis would look like q. Its image by reflection in a horizontal axis would look like b. A reflection is an involution: when applied twice in succession, every point returns to its original location, and every geometrical object is restored to its original state. 

In Science, Reflection is the change in direction of a wavefront at an interface between two different media so that the wavefront returns into the medium from which it originated. Common examples include the reflection of light, sound and water waves. The law of reflection says that for specular reflection (for example at a mirror) the angle at which the wave is incident on the surface equals the angle at which it is reflected. 

In acoustics, reflection causes echoes and is used in sonar. In geology, it is important in the study of seismic waves. Reflection is observed with surface waves in bodies of water. Reflection is observed with many types of electromagnetic wave, besides visible light. Reflection of VHF and higher frequencies is important for radio transmission and for radar.   

Most modern TVs have glossy screens, which act like a mirror for any light source in a room (from windows to lamps). Some TVs, including many older models, have more matte screens, which don't show the same mirror-like reflections. Ambient light still adversely affects matte screen TVs though. Instead of bouncing the light right back at you, a matte finish spreads that light energy across the whole screen. Reflections are lessened, but black level gets brighter, so they look more washed out overall.  Reflections on your TV can make it nearly impossible to watch. Luckily, there are ways to reduce irritating TV glare. 

A research team from the University of Maryland has developed an artificial intelligence-powered (AI) method to reconstruct complex scenes and objects in 3D using only the reflections in a person’s eye. “The reflective nature of the human eye is an underappreciated source of information about what the world around us looks like. By imaging the eyes of a moving person, we can collect multiple views of a scene outside the camera’s direct line-of-sight through the reflections in the eyes,” explain the researchers.

 

What you are seeing in the photo here is reflection of coconut trees in a small pond at Ananthazhwan avathara sthalam, Hale Kiranguru, near Mandya !!

With regards – S. Sampathkumar
18.7.2023