Title: Reflection Lab #

Aim: To investigate the relationship between the angle of incidence and the angle of reflection

Apparatus: Optical board, thumb tacks, pins, sheet of paper, plane mirror, ruler, protractor.

Diagram:

Procedure:

1. Attach the sheet of paper to the optical board placing the thumb tacks at the four corners.
2. Draw a straight line at the center of the paper. This represents the mirror line.
3. Draw a normal perpendicular to the mirror line drawn.
4. Place the mirror along the mirror line.
5. Using your ruler to make an accurate measurement, place one pin at a distance of 10cm away
from the center of the mirror on the normal and label this position “O”
6. Record the nature of the image formed in the mirror.
7. Place another pin “P1” at a distance of 4 cm to the left of the normal, closer to the mirror than
“O”. Ensure that this pin is positioned in such a way that it is line with the image of “O” in the
mirror.
8. Place another pin “P2” in line with the “P1” and the image “O” in the mirror.
9. To the right of ‘O’ repeat steps 6 and 7 using ‘P3’ and ‘P4’ respectively.
10. Ensure that all the points are labelled, then remove the pin.
11. Draw a straight line through ‘P1’ and ‘P2’ that extends beyond the mirror line to meet the
normal.
12. Repeat step 10 through points ‘P3’ and ‘P4’.
13. Label the points at which these two lines as ‘I’
14. Record the length of ‘O’ to the mirror line ‘I’.
15. To the left of ‘O’, draw a straight line from ‘O’ to meet the line drawn through ‘P1’ and ‘P2’ to
meet at the mirror line. Label the point of intersection ‘A’.
16. Repeat steps 14 on the right of ‘O’ to meet the line drawn through ‘P3’ and ‘P4’ at the mirror line.
Label this point of intersection B.
17. Draw a normal perpendicular to the mirror line at the intersecting points A and B.
18. Using protractor, measure the angle of incidence, I, and the angle of reflection, r, at both point A
and B and record results in table.

Results:

Points Angle of Incidence, I Angle of Reflection, R

A
B

(Stick drawing here)

Discussion: State and explain law of reflection and explain experiment. (Source of error, Precaution,
Conclusion)