What Causes a ‘Mirage’ and How Is It Different from a ‘Hallucination’?

A mirage is when the air tricks your eyes into seeing something that isn’t really there. It happens because hot air near the ground bends light, making it look like there's a lake or a road ahead. A hallucination, on the other hand, is when you see things that aren’t there even without any real object to cause it, like imagining a monster in your closet.

When the sun heats up the ground, it also warms up the air near it. Hot air is less dense than cool air, so it makes light bend as it travels through different layers of air. This bending can make objects appear higher or lower, like a lake on the road that isn’t actually there.

Mirages are real tricks caused by refraction, while hallucinations happen in your brain, not because something is physically changing around you.