What is a characteristic of the image produced by a plane mirror?

The characteristic that defines the image produced by a plane mirror is that it appears to be reflected left-to-right. When you look into a plane mirror, the image you see is a virtual image that maintains the same size and shape as the object. However, it appears reversed in the horizontal direction. This means that if you raise your right hand, the image in the mirror seems to raise its left hand, leading to the common misconception of "inversion."

The left-to-right reversal occurs because the mirror reflects the light rays without altering their relative distances from the mirror. This preservation of distance accounts for the apparent shifting of the orientation of the image while keeping all other dimensions consistent.

Other aspects of the image, such as its size or vertical orientation, differ from what is characteristic for plane mirrors. The image size remains equal to the actual size of the object, and vertical inversion does not occur in plane mirrors, which reinforces the clarity of the left-to-right reflection characteristic.