Lectures on Physics has been derived from Benjamin Crowell's Light and Matter series of free introductory textbooks on physics. See the editorial for more information....

Summary - Mirrors

A large class of optical devices, including lenses and flat and curved mirrors, operates by bending light rays to form an image. A real image is one for which the rays actually cross at each point of the image. A virtual image, such as the one formed behind a flat mirror, is one for which the rays only appear to have crossed at a point on the image. A real image can be projected onto a screen; a virtual one cannot.

Mirrors and lenses will generally make an image that is either smaller than or larger than the original object. The scaling factor is called the magnification. In many situations, the angular magnification is more important than the actual magnification.

Every lens or mirror has a property called the focal length, which is defined as the distance from the lens or mirror to the image it forms of an object that is infinitely far away. A stronger lens or mirror has a shorter focal length.

The relationship between the locations of an object and its image formed by a lens or mirror can always be expressed by equations of the form

The choice of plus and minus signs depends on whether we are dealing with a lens or a mirror, whether the lens or mirror is converging or diverging, and whether the image is real or virtual. A method for determining the plus and minus signs is as follows:

1. Use ray diagrams to decide whether θi and θo vary in the same way or in opposite ways. Based on this, decide whether the two signs in the equation are the same or opposite. If the signs are opposite, go on to step 2 to determine which is positive and which is negative.

2. It is normally only physically possible for either θi or θo to be zero, not both. Imagine the case where that variable is zero. Since the left-hand side of the equation is positive by definition, the term on the right that we didn't eliminate must be the one that has a plus sign.

Once the correct form of the equation has been determined, the magnification can be found via the equation



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Last Update: 2010-11-11