Brussels Through a Convex MirrorBhavya ThakurAward: Top 100
School: trinity school This is the bottom of a sphere from Brussels' Atomium, a gleaming architectural marvel that is mounted high above the city. Originally created for the 1948 World's Fair, the structure is an 18-meter diameter spherical mirror that makes a beautifully distorted, wide-angle reflection. Convex spherical mirrors skew the image smaller and upright because its outward curvature causes light rays to diverge rather than converge, causing the reflected rays to spread out more than they would if reflected in a flat mirror, hence the "funny looking" semi-circular appearance. The surface isn't a flawless reflector; its convex shape scatters the sunlight unevenly, causing the left and right sides to appear darker than the sky due to less exposure. The black, triangular looking cutouts on the sides of the structure are windows providing tourists a 102-meter high view of Brussels. The symmetrical plaza in this reflected image looks like a bear whose ears are composed of the other reflective spheres in the Atomium. The Atomium is a giant model of a unit cell of an iron crystal, magnified 165 billion times! 
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