Mirrors

When you focus on an object, a single point, your eyes are receiving light waves diverging from
that point. This must be true for an object, or an image of an object, to be visible. To put it
simply, if our eyes detect light waves diverging from a point, that point will be visible. As you
will see, this is very important in terms of how mirrors work.

For plane (flat) mirrors, light is reflected according to the law of reflection. When the eyes
receive these light waves, it looks as if the waves are diverging from behind the mirror, making it
appear as if the object is behind the mirror as well. This type of image is called a virtual image,
because light waves do not actually pass through that point, it only appears so. The distance
between the object and the mirror is called the object distance and the distance between the
virtual image and the mirror is the image distance. Notice that on plane mirrors, the object
distance is equal to the image distance.

Curved mirrors are slightly more complicated. There are basically two types of curved mirrors:
concave and convex. A concave mirror curves toward the incoming light while a convex mirror
curves away from the incoming light. For now, we will assume that light waves striking the lens
are from an object infinitely far away, therefore, the light waves will be parallel with the
principal axis.

When light strikes a concave mirror of curvature radius R, the light waves will reflect and
converge at a point on the principal axis that is 1/2 * R in front of the mirror. This point is called
the focal point. Since light is converging at the focal point, it is also diverging from that point on
the other side. Therefore, the image of the object is created at the focal point, appearing as if the
object is actually there. Notice that this image is not like the image of the plane mirror, light
actually pass through where the image is. This type of image is called a real image.

When light strikes a convex mirror of curvature radius of R, the light waves will reflect and
appear to diverge from a point on the optic axis that is 1/2 * R behind the mirror. Just like that of
the concave mirror, this point is also called the focal point. The image of the object, even if the
object is infinitely far away, will appear as if it is 1/2 * R behind the mirror.
Notice that the focal point of both the concave and convex mirrors are 1/2 * R away from the
mirror. This distance between the mirror and the focal point, 1/2 * R, is called the focal length.
The focal length of a concave mirror is always positive while that of the convex mirror is always
negative.

Now, obviously, objects can not be infinitely far away, so we can not have it so easy as to have
all the light waves always being parallel to the principal axis. If the light waves are not parallel to
the principal axis, what then? No sweat! We can still locate the image, where the light waves
converge then diverge off, by using three principal rays and finding where they converge.

Notice that the first and second set of principal rays are essentially the same, so any one of the
first two principal rays along with the third is all that is required to determine the image location.
The image of an object from a concave mirror is a smaller, inversed version of the object. From a
concave mirror, the image is a smaller, upright version of the object.

The object distance, image distance, and focal length are all related by the image equation: 1/do
+ 1/di = 1/f

Lenses
Lenses work very much like mirrors. We will discuss two types of mirrors: the double convex
and the double concave.

The double convex lense is a converging lense. When light waves parallel to the principal axis
from an infinitely far object passes through the lense, it will converge at a focal point F on the
principal axis. The distance between the focal point and the lens is the focal length, which is
always a positive value for converging lenses.

The double concave lens is a diverging lens. When light waves from an infinitely far object
passes through the lens, the light waves will diverge as if it originated from a focal point F on the
principal axis. The focal length is always a negative value for diverging lenses.

Can you see where these two types of lenses could be applied?

Just like the mirrors, there are three principal rays for lenses used for locating the image. Notice
that because the mirrors work the same in both directions, there are two focal points. Also, notice
that all images created by lenses are real images.
The object distance, image distance, and focal length are also related by the image equation: 1/do
+ 1/di = 1/f

For this reason, the image equation is also known as the thin lens equation.