Optics
Optics
Optics
• 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.
• Notice that the rays reflect from the surface of the mirror and
converge—or focus—at the focal point, F.
• 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.
• If two of these quantities are known, the mirror equation yields the third.