UNIVERSITY: MULTIMIDEA UNIVERSITY OF KENYA

NAME: Mwangi Dennis Mungai

REGISTRATION NUMBER: ENG-219-008/2023

UNIT NAME: PHYSICS FOR ENGINEERS 1

UNIT CODE: PHE 2113

SUBMITTED TO:

EXPERIMENT NAME: LAWS OF REFLECTION

TITLE: LAWS OF REFLECTION

OBJECTIVES OF THE EXPERIMENT

The experiment aimed to verify the laws of reflection using a plane mirror.

BACKGROUND INFORMATION OF THE EXPERIMENT

When light falls on a smooth polished surface, it gets reflected in a definite direction. As shown on
the diagram below, a ray of light PO, incident on a plane polished surface (plane mirror) SS’. Line OQ
shows the changed path of the incident ray after reflection at the point O. The ray PO is called
incident ray and ray OQ is called reflected ray.

The point O where the incident ray strikes the polished surface is called point of incidence. If ON be
the normal to the polished surface SS’ at point O, then the angle PON and the angle NOQ are called
the angle of incidence (i) and the angle of reflection(r) respectively. The plane containing the
incident ray and the normal ray is called the plane of incidence.

The laws of reflection obtained from the experiments states that:

i)the reflected ray lies in the plane of incidence along with the normal at a point of incidence.

ii)the angle of incidence is equal to the angle of reflection

APPARATUS USED

A plane mirror with a vertical support to hold it vertical, a drawing board, a sheet of white paper,
protractor, measuring scale and adhesive tape were used.

PROCEDURE

A white sheet of paper was fixed on the drawing board using an adhesive tape. A thin line SS’ was
drawn in the middle of the paper. Also, a normal ON to the line SS’ at point O was drawn. A thin line
PO to the line SS’ at any angle was drawn. The mirror was placed vertically on line SS’ with the help
of a support so that its polished surface faced line PO.

Two pins P1 and P2 were vertically fixed with their tips and separated on a suitable distance of about
5cm to 6 cm on line PO. The pins were observed from the same side and their images were seen.
Pins P3 and P4 were fixed such that their feet appeared to be on the same line with the images of
pins P1 and P2.
All the pins and the mirror were removed and point where pins P3 and P4 were placed was marked.
A thin line OQ was drawn joining the points that marked the position of the feet of pins P3 and P4.
The line was extended till it met line SS.

Angles <PON and <NOQ were measured and their values recorded. The above experiment was
repeated for two more angles of incidence.