Chapter 16 Lecture

Pearson Physics

Reflection and Mirrors

Prepared by
Chris Chiaverina

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 Chapter Contents

• The Reflection of Light

• Plane Mirrors
• Curved Mirrors

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 The Reflection of Light

• If you throw a ball at a wall, it bounces back.

Sound and light waves also bounce (reflect) off
a wall. That's why you hear echoes from a wall and
can see a wall even though it produces no light.
• In general, waves are reflected—at least partially
—any time they encounter a boundary between
two different materials.
• In the case of a wall, the two materials are the air
in the room and the substance of the wall.

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 The Reflection of Light

• When light hits a boundary between air and

glass, for example, some of the light passes into
the glass, and some reflects back into the air.
The reflected rays stay in the original substance
and travel in a different direction.
• Mirrors are simply objects that are particularly
good at reflecting light waves.

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 The Reflection of Light

• To study the reflection of light, we need a simple way to draw

situations we are interested in. A convenient method is to use rays.
A ray is an arrow that points in the direction that light travels.
• Waves created by a rock dropped into a pool of water form
concentric outward-moving circles. The figure below shows a
simplified version of this situation.

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 The Reflection of Light

• The circles represent crests of the outgoing waves. The outward

motion of the waves is indicated by the outward-pointing arrows—
the rays.
• Rays are always at right angles to the wave fronts.
• A similar situation applies to light and other electromagnetic waves,
as illustrated in the figure below.

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 The Reflection of Light

• In this case, the waves move out in three dimensions. Spherical

waves fronts such as these have rays that point radially outward.
• The figure below shows that as waves move farther from a source,
spherical wave fronts become flat planes, and the rays become
parallel.

• In general, plane waves have flat wave fronts and parallel rays all
pointing in the same direction.

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 The Reflection of Light

• Plane waves and their corresponding rays are useful when

investigating the properties of mirrors.
• Consider a beam of light that reflects from a mirror. To study this
situation, we begin by drawing the normal to the surface of the
mirror. The normal to a reflecting surface is a line drawn
perpendicular to the surface. An example is shown as a dashed line
in the figure below.

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 The Reflection of Light

• The incident and reflected beams of light in the

figure are each represented by a single ray. The
incident ray hits the surface of the mirror at the
angle θ1 to the normal. The angle θ1 is called the
angle of incidence.
• Similarly, the angle of reflection, θ2, is the angle
that the reflected ray makes with the normal.
• The relationship between the angle of reflection
and the angle of incidence is very simple—they
are equal. This relationship is called the law of
reflection.
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 The Reflection of Light

• When light reflects from a surface, the texture of the

surface determines its appearance. A smooth surface
looks shiny because the reflected light is "beamed" in
one direction.
• Reflection from a smooth surface, with all the reflected
light moving in one direction, is referred to as specular
reflection. An example of specular reflection is shown in
the figure below.

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 The Reflection of Light

• Specular reflection is responsible for the sharp, clear

images seen in mirrors. Such an image appears in the
mirror-like surface of a lake, as is seen in the figure
below.

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 The Reflection of Light

• Reflection from rough surfaces is quite different.

Consider the rough surface of a bathroom towel.
It reflects light in all directions.
• Reflection that sends light off in a variety of
directions is referred to as diffuse reflection.
• An example of diffuse reflection is shown in the
figure below.

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 The Reflection of Light

• The surface of a road proves a good illustration of the

difference between specular and diffuse reflection.
• When the road is wet, the water creates a smooth
surface. Headlights reflecting from the wet road undergo
specular reflection, producing an intense glare.
• When the road is dry, the surface is rough, and the
headlights are reflected in many different directions.
• The law of reflection is obeyed in both cases, of course—
it's the texture of the surface that differs.

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 The Reflection of Light

• A clever application of specular and diffuse

reflection occurs in an electronic chip known as
a digital micromirror device (DMD). These small
devices consist of as many as 1.3 million
microscopic plane mirrors.
• When all 1.3 million micromirrors are oriented in
the same direction, the DMD acts like a small
plane mirror. When the micromirrors are oriented
randomly, the reflection form the DMD is diffuse.
• When a DMD is used to project a movie, each
micrometer plays the role of a single pixel in the
projected image.
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 The Reflection of Light

• In such a projection system, the light directed

onto the DMD cycles rapidly from red to green to
blue, and each micromirror reflects only the
appropriate colors for that pixel onto the screen.
• A digital micromirror projection system is shown
in the figure below.

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 The Reflection of Light

• The speed of light is greater than anything else in the

universe. It also travels along the path that gives the
shortest possible travel time.
• As an example, when light travels from point A to point B
in the figure below, it travels along a straight line from A
to B. As we know, a straight line is the shortest distance
between two points, and therefore the path of least time.

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 The Reflection of Light

• Suppose, instead, that light travels from point A

to a mirror, reflects from the mirror, and then
continues to point B. This situation is shown in
the figure below.

• Which path should the light take if it is to get to B

in the least time? That is, from which point on
the mirror should the light reflect?
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 The Reflection of Light

• It turns out that the travel time is least when the light
follows path 2. This obeys the law of reflection, with the
angle of reflection equal to the angle of incidence.
• This path is also the shortest possible reflecting path
from A to B. The distances (and travel times) along paths
1 and 3 are greater, as is shown in the figure below.

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 Plane Mirrors

• A perfectly flat mirror is called a plane mirror.

• Before discussing how mirrors produce images,
let's consider how objects produce images in our
eyes.
• Any nearby object is bathed in light coming at it
from all directions. As the object reflects the light
back into the room, each point on it acts like a
source of light.
• When you view the object, the light coming from
a point on the object enters your eyes and is
focused to a point on the retina. This is the case
for every point that you can see on the object.
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 Plane Mirrors

• This results in a one-to-one connection between the

physical object and the image on the retina.
• The formation of a mirror image occurs in the same way,
except the light from the object reflects off the mirror
before it enters the eyes. This is illustrated in the figure
below, in which a small flower in a vase placed before a
plane mirror.

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 Plane Mirrors

• Rays of light leaving the top of the flower at point P reflect from the
mirror and enter the eye of an observer. To the observer, it appears
that the rays are coming from the point P′ behind the mirror.
• Similar remarks apply to rays of light coming from the base of the
flower vase.
• In the figure below, a ray is drawn from the flower to the mirror—
where it reflects—and then to the eye.

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 Plane Mirrors

• The construction shown in the figure indicates that the

length of the line PQ (object to mirror) is the same as the
length of the line QP′ (mirror to image).
• In other words, the image formed by a plane mirror
appears as far behind the mirror as the object is in front
of the mirror.
• We can write this in the form of an equation as follows:
image distance = −(object distance)
di = −do
where di is the image distance and do is the object
distance.

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 Plane Mirrors

• The negative image distance means that the

image is behind the mirror.
• In general, an image that is behind a mirror is
known as a virtual image. The term virtual is
used to indicate that no light passes through the
image and that it cannot be projected onto a
screen. A virtual image looks just as real to your
eye as any physical object, however.

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 Plane Mirrors

• In the previous figure, notice that the height of

the image is the same as the height of the
object. This is always true for plane mirrors.
• If we let hi denote the image height and ho the
object height, we can express this result with the
following simple equation:
hi = ho
• Finally, it should be noted that plane mirrors
reverse right and left. This is the reason
ambulances and other emergency vehicles have
mirror-image labels on the front.
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 Plane Mirrors

• An interesting application of mirror images is the heads-up display.

An example from an airplane is shown in the figure below.

• The heads-up display in an airplane cockpit displays important flight

information by reflecting it on a transparent screen near the
windshield. This lets the pilot view the data without looking away
from the scene ahead.
• Some cars also use heads-up displays.
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 Plane Mirrors

• If three plane mirrors are joined at right angles,

as shown in the figure below, the result is
referred to as a corner reflector.

• A light ray incident on a corner reflector is sent

back in the same direction from which it came.
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 Plane Mirrors

• Corner reflectors are used on ships, especially

on lifeboats, where they reflect radar waves
directly back to the source. Often referred to as
retroreflectors, corner reflectors are common on
cars, on bicycles, and even on the backs of
running shoes.

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 Curved Mirrors

• Curved mirrors produce all sorts of interesting

effects, like enlarging an object, shrinking an
object, or even turning an object upside-down.
• There are two basic types of curved mirrors,
concave and convex.
• A concave mirror is one that curves inward,
forming a sort of "cave" within the mirror.
• In contrast, a convex mirror has the opposite
shape—it bulges outward like the surface of a
ball.

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 Curved Mirrors

• Most curved mirrors have a spherical shape, as

indicated in the figure below, and are referred to
as spherical mirrors. A typical spherical mirror is
just a portion of a spherical shell of radius R.

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 Curved Mirrors

• If the inside of this spherical section is a

reflecting surface, the result is a concave
spherical mirror. If the outside surface is
reflecting, the result is a convex spherical mirror.
The two situations are illustrated in the figures
below.

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 Curved Mirrors

• The figure also shows the center of curvature

and the principal axis for each type of mirror.
• The center of curvature, C, is the center of the
spherical shell with radius R of which the curved
mirror is a section.
• The principal axis is a straight line drawn
through the center of curvature and the midpoint
of the mirror. Notice that the principal axis
intersects the mirror at right angles.

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 Curved Mirrors

• In the figure below, a beam of light is directed

toward the mirror along its principal axis. This
beam is represented in the figure by several
parallel rays.

• Notice that the rays reflect from the surface of

the mirror and converge—or focus—at the focal
point, F.
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 Curved Mirrors

• From the figure we can see that the focal point, F, is

halfway between the center of curvature, C, and the
surface of the mirror.
• Since the center of curvature is a distance R from the
surface, it follows that the distance from the mirror to the
focal point is R/2. In general, the focal length, f, of a
concave mirror is the distance from the surface of the
mirror to the focal point. That is,
focal length = ½ (radius of curvature)
f = ½R
• With a concave mirror, incoming rays of light that are
parallel to the principal axis are reflected through the
focal point.
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 Curved Mirrors

• Several parallel rays are shown approaching a convex

mirror in the figure below.

• Incoming rays of light that are parallel to the principal

axis of a convex mirror spread outward when they are
reflected—just as if they had started from the focal point
behind the mirror. However, no light actually passes
through the focal point of a convex mirror.
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 Curved Mirrors

• To distinguish between focal points in front and

behind a mirror, we give a sign to the focal
length. The sign of the focal length is determined
as follows:
– The focal length of a mirror is positive if the
focal point is in front of the mirror. All concave
mirrors have positive focal lengths.
– The focal point of a mirror is negative if the
focal point is behind the mirror. All convex
mirrors have negative focal lengths.

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 Curved Mirrors

• The easiest way to find the image formed by a

mirror is to draw a few rays and see how they
reflect.
• In this method, called ray tracing, we draw the
paths of rays of light as they reflect from a mirror
and use them to find the location of the image.

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 Curved Mirrors

• Three rays, known as principal rays, are used in ray tracing with
spherical mirrors. These rays are illustrated in the figure below.

• As the figure shows, the parallel ray (P ray) reflects through the
focal point. The focal-point ray (F ray) reflects parallel to the
principal axis, and the center-of-curvature ray (C ray) reflects back
along its incoming path.

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 Curved Mirrors

• The figure below shows the principal rays used in ray tracing for a
convex mirror.

• The following figure shows how the principal rays can be used to
obtain an image with a convex mirror.

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 Curved Mirrors

• The figure shows that in front of the mirror is an object,

represented symbolically by the red arrow. Also indicated
in the figure are the principal rays.
• Notice that these rays diverge from the mirror as if they
had originated from the tip of the dashed orange arrow
behind the mirror.
• Recall that an image formed behind a mirror (with no
light passing through the image) is a virtual image.
• It is worth noting that even though three rays were used
in the figure, any two would have given an intersection
point at the tip of the virtual image.

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 Curved Mirrors

• As the figure below illustrates, when an object is

close to a convex mirror, the image is practically
the same size and distance from the mirror. If
the object is far from the mirror, the image is
small and close to the focal point.

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 Curved Mirrors

• Concave mirrors are capable of producing a variety of images.

• The F and P rays for the case where the object is farther from the
mirror than the center of curvature are shown in the figure below.

• The C ray isn't needed in this case and has been omitted for clarity.
Notice that the image is inverted (upside-down), closer to the mirror,
and smaller than the object.
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 Curved Mirrors

• The ray diagram for the case where the object is

between the center of curvature and the focal point is
shown below. Again, the C ray has been omitted for
clarity.

• As the figure shows, the image is real and inverted, but it

is now farther from the mirror and larger than the object.
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 Curved Mirrors

• The case in which the object is between the

mirror and the focal point is discussed in the
following Guided Example.

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 Curved Mirrors

• The imaging characteristics of convex and

concave mirrors are summarized in the table
below.

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 Curved Mirrors

• While ray tracing is very useful, images can be located more

precisely with an equation. The mirror equation is a precise
mathematical relationship between object distance, image distance,
and focal length for a given mirror.
• In the figure below, an object is at a distance do from a mirror. The
image is a distance di from the mirror, and the focal point is a
distance f from the mirror.

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 Curved Mirrors

• These three distances, do, di, and f, are related

by the following equation:

• If two of these quantities are known, the mirror

equation yields the third.

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 Curved Mirrors

• It is important to identify and use the correct sign

for each term in the mirror equation. The sign
convention for both concave and convex mirrors
is summarized in the table below.

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 Curved Mirrors

• The following example shows how the mirror

equation may be used to determine the image
distance in the case of a concave mirror.

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 Curved Mirrors

• The following example shows how the mirror

equation may be used to determine the image
distance in the case of a convex mirror.

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 Curved Mirrors

• Curved mirrors typically produce images that are either

larger or smaller than the object. The figure below shows
an image that is reduced in size.

• In general, the ratio of the height of the image, hi, to the

height of the object, ho, is defined as the magnification, m.

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 Curved Mirrors

• The magnification can also be determined in terms of the

object and image distances as follows:

• The sign of the magnification tells whether the image is

upright or inverted:

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