Optics Lessons: Part 5 - Mirrors and Lenses

Lenses and mirrors play important roles in our daily lives even though we may not notice them. Even now, as you are
reading this, you are using the cornea lens in each eye and if you use eyewear such as contacts or glasses, you are
also those lenses to view this page. Recently you have probably seen your reflection in a mirror. In this lesson, we
will explore different types of lenses and see how they impact vision.
First we will focus on mirrors, but before we go onto the specifics, here are a few basic terms that will help you
throughout the section:

Focal Point, Focal Length, Virtual Image, Real Image, Parallel ray, Radial ray, Focal ray
Now, that we got that straight, let's learn about the different types of mirrors and what kind of images they produce.
There are two basic types of mirrors: plane mirrors and spherical mirrors.
Plane Mirrors
A plane mirror has even surfaces. The normal is a line perpendicular to all points of a plane mirror. The angle of
incidence is an angle that light hits the mirror relative to the normal. The angle of reflection is an angle of that light's
reflection, on the other part of the normal, and is equal to the angle of incidence.
The image seen in a plane mirror seems to be behind the mirror. This is an example of a virtual image It is also right-
side up, but reversed from right to left. This can be seem noticably by holding up a word to a plane mirror. The letters
would each be flipped and the order of the word would be reversed.
To determine the size of an image seen through a plane mirror, the following equation is used:

Spherical Mirrors
A spherical mirror is a mirror in the form of a slice of a spherical surface.
A convex mirror is curved outward, like the outside of a sphere. When parallel light rays pass through a convex
mirror, the reflected light appears to have come from behind, hence making it a virtual image. Because the rays
reflected from a convex mirror diverge from any length, a diverging mirror will always produce a virtual image. This
explains why the passenger side mirrors of cars, which are convex mirrors, display objects that look smaller than they
are: the brain considers the diverging rays to have come from an image behind the mirror itself.
A concave mirror curves inward like the hollow inside of a sphere. Or, in other words, it appears "caved-in", which
could help you differentiate from both spherical mirrors. The light hitting the surface of concave mirror converges, and
the image made by the mirror is either virtual or real, depending on the position of the object that is reflected. If the
object is between the mirror and the focus, it will be right side up, virtual, and larger, while objects farther than the
focus will be real images that subject to the position once again, may appear upside-down, larger, or smaller.
Spherical Mirror Equations
Here are equations that analytically explain the image results discussed in the previous section.
Where M is the magnification factor sobject is distance from object to the mirror, simage is the distance from the image to
the mirror, f is focal length, and R is radius of curvature.
The focal length of a spherical mirror:
The spherical mirror equation:

The magnification equation for a spherical mirror:

Note: If the magnitude, or the absolute value of M is greater than one, then the image is larger than the object, and if
it is less than one, then the image is smaller than the object.
Lenses
An optical lens is made from see-through materials and is generally spherical in shape.
Note: In this lesson, we will assume the lenses are thin lens, where the displacement of light as a result of refraction
is so small, it can be ignored. Analyzing certain relationships with thick lens characteristics will be too complex
because of the possibly large displacements resulting from the refraction from them.
Types of Lenses
Two types of lenses are biconvex lenses, which are converging lenses and biconcave lenses, which are diverging
lenses. Converging lenses are thicker in the center than at the edges, while diverging lenses are thicker at the edges
that in the center.
Let’s compare the images each type of lens produces:
Convex or converging lenses can form real or virtual images:
• When the light enters in parallel rays, the light is concentrated on one point-the focal point.
• When the light enters from an object that is further away from the lens that the focal length, the light is
concentrated on one point where a real image is produced.
• When the light enters from an object that is closer to the lens than the focal length, the light diverges, as to
seem to have come from behind the lens, forming a virtual image.
• When the light enters from the lens’ focal point, the lens makes the light a parallel beam.
Concave or diverging lenses produce virtual images. The light rays appear to diverge from the virtual image on the
side of the lens with the object.
As done previously with the mirrors section, here are equations that analytically explain the image results described
above:
Where M is the magnification factor sobject is distance from object to the lens, simage is the distance from the image to
the lens, f is focal length:
Lens Equations
Thins Lens Equation:

OR
Magnification equation with a thin lens:

Aberration
So far we've assumed that light rays all focus correctly on a single point--the focus point. But sometimes light rays
emanating from the same point pass through the lens or mirror and converge to different foci. This is called
aberration.
There are three types of aberration in optics: speherical, chromatic, and astronomical.
Spherical aberration is generated by spherical lenses or mirrors. Spherical aberration causes light to spread, which
results in a blurry image.
Convex mirrors or lenses: The rays that pass through the edges of the lens focus closer to the lens than the rays that
pass through the center. For instance, this lenses causes the image seen through a camera to be blurry- but using
the stop mechanism of the camera, the rays that hit the edge of the lenses are blocked out, resulting in a single focus
and a sharper image.
Concave mirrors or lenses: If the parallel light rays reflect from it, the rays that reflect from the center meet at one
point while the rays that reflect beyond the center meet at points around the mirror's surface.
Chromatic aberration: Lenses refract light differently based on their wavelength. So as white light passes through a
lenses, the individual colors (ROYGBIV-red, orange, yellow, etc.) don't focus on the same point. Violet, with a short
wavelength bends more than red and focuses closer to the lens than red.
Astronomical aberration: This type of aberration, unlike the other two types, is not related to the focus of light rays.
Here is an exmaple of it: From the sun, light takes about eight minutes to reach Earth and appears to travel at an
angle. So the light we see is from eight minutes ago. The same phenomenon occurs with stars, except with longer
lengths of time. As a result, when you are watching the stars, you are actually watching the past!

Introduction to plane and spherical mirrors:

Plane mirror are commonly used for looking glasses. A plane mirror is generally made
of glass plate of few millimeters thickness .One surface of glass is polished to a high
degree of smoothness forming the front surface of the mirror .The back surface is
silvered that is then painted with silver or mercury or some opaque material. The front
surface the silvering is protected because coating of opaque paint .When the light falls
on this plate it falls on silver passing the opaque paint and gets reflected and we neglect
the thickness of plate and represent the mirror as single surface.
Image Formation in Plane Mirror
Consider a point object O placed just in front of a plane mirror. Light rays falling from O
fall on the plane mirror and gets reflected .The reflected rays reflect backwards to meet
at a point I and the reflected rays fall on our eyes they pretend to come from I .Hence
we see the image of O at I and image is formed in the plane mirror

Spherical Mirror
All mirrors we use in day to day life are not plane and there comes the picture of
spherical mirror. For example the rear view mirrors we often see in the vehicles have a
curved surface such mirrors are spherical mirrors. A cut off portion from a glass sphere
or a portion has two dissimilar surfaces form the spherical mirror.The same side of
surface as the centre of the original sphere is called the concave surface. The
expanding surface in the spherical mirror which expands out is called the convex
surface. The spherical mirror has one polished and other smooth surface when we
silver on other surface we get two types of spherical mirrors. If concave surface is
silvered and convex surface is made smooth we get a convex mirror. If concave
surface is smoothed and convex surface is silvered we get a concave mirror.When the
light falls on the smooth surface of the spherical mirror it enters the glass and it gets
reflected at the opaque silver surface The thickness of the glass is not of that concern
and that represents the single curved surface spherical mirror.

Introduction:
When a light falls on a surface, the light is bouncing back after it is striking a
surface called reflection. The surface may be plane or spherical shapes. When we are
cutting the spherical shell into circular cross sections then we get a curved shape
mirrors. Because of the reflection all the objects should be visible and seen by people.
Reflection of Light by Spherical Mirrors:
Spherical mirrors:
The spherical mirrors are of two shapes.
• Concave mirrors
• Convex mirrors
Concave mirror: The mirror whose inner part of the surface makes reflection of light is
called concave mirrors.
Convex mirror: The mirror whose outer part of the surface makes reflection of light is
called convex mirrors.
Terms Related to Spherical Mirrors:
Terms in reflection by spherical mirrors:
• Radius of curvature: spherical shell radius
• Center of curvature: spherical shell center.
• Pole: reflecting surface center is called pole denoted p.
• Principal axis: The principal axis is an imaginary line which is passing through the
pole and center of curvature.
• Aperture: Reflecting surface whose diameter is called aperture.
• Principal focus: The principal focus is the point where the rays meet after the
process of reflection.
• Focal length: it is the distance among the pole and the principal focus.
Rays in Spherical Mirrors:
There are 3 rays should be taken for spherical mirrors.
• Ray 1: Ray 1 has the property of parallel to the principal axis.
In concave mirror, the ray after reflected it is passing along principal focus F and
in convex mirror it appears to pass along the principal focus F.
Ray 2: For concave mirror, the ray 2 has the property of passes along the principal focus F and
in convex mirror it is directed towards the principal focus

• Ray 3: In concave mirror the ray is allowed to pass along the middle of curvature
and reflected back along its original axis.
In convex mirrors ray is striking towards the middle of curvature as normal
incidence is reflected back to its original path.
PLANE MIRRORS IMAGE FORMATION

(i) The image formed by a plane mirror lies as far behind it as the object lies in front of
it.

(ii) This change in the direction of "path of light is called the deviation.
(iii) (ii) The image formed by a plane mirror is virtual, erect but laterally inverted
i.e., the right-hand side of the object becomes the left-hand side of the image
(Fig. 11.9 and Fig. 11.10).
(iv) (iii) The image formed by a plane mirror is of the same size as that of the
object
(v) It is interesting to note that to see the image of 00', only the small
portion AB' of the mirror is used (Fig. 11.10). The remaining portion of the
mirror is useless. The size of the mirror required to see the image of an object
depends upon the position of the object and the eye.
 (vi) Another point which may be borne in mind is that to see the image of an
object, it need not be directly in front of the plane mirror.
\
(vii) Rotation of a Plane Mirror
(viii) Let the mirror MXM2 be rotated through an angle 6 when AO be ihe incident
ray of light. The direction of the reflected beam depends upon the position of
the mirror. Hence, if this be changcd, the direction of the reflected beam will
also change. In Fig. 11.11, the angle through which the reflected ray of light
gets rotated is Z B OB..

Hence for a fixed incident ray, when a mirror rotates through a

certain > angle, the reflected ray rotates through twice that angle.

The following rays are usually considered while constructing ray diagrams.

A Ray Diagram Showing the formation of an Image by a Plane Mirror

A ray of light incident on a plane mirror at 90o gets reflected from the mirror along the same path.
A ray of light falling on a plane mirror at any angle gets reflected from the mirror such that the angle of incidence is
equal to the angle of reflection.

Image Formation When an Object is Placed between Two Inclined

Mirrors
It has been found that if the mirrors are inclined at an angle q then the number of images is given by the

relation If is not a whole number, then the number of images will be rounded off to the nearest
integer. This can be verified by actual drawing.
If the mirrors are inclined at 120o the number of images formed by the mirrors is given by the

relation

Case - I
Let MM and MM' be two plane mirrors inclined at an angle 120o and O be the object placed in between these mirrors.
In this case there will be only two images viz., O1 and O2.

Case II
Now let us consider the mirrors MM and MM' to be mutually perpendicular. In this case the number of images formed

by the mirror is
The Angle of Inclination Between the Mirrors is 900.

• Place the mirrors MM' perpendicular to MM.

• An object O is kept in between these mirrors.
• OA and OB are the two rays, which are incident on the mirror MM.
• OA being normal to the surface retraces its path.
• OB makes an angle i with the normal N and gets reflected along BC according to the laws of reflection
• Extend the rays OA and BC backwards.
• They meet at O1, which is the virtual image of O.
• OD and OE represent the rays which are incident on the mirror MM'.
• OD is perpendicular to the mirror MM' and hence gets reflected along the same path.
• OE is the incidentray and N2 is the normal at the point of incidence and OE gets reflected along the path EF.
• Extend OD and EF backwards. They meet at O2, which is the virtual image of O.
• The reflected ray BC gets internally reflected by the mirror MM' along CG.
• The ray DG appears to comes from O3, which is the image of O1,
• Similarly EF the reflected ray gets internally reflected by the mirror MM along FH.
• The ray FH appears to come from O4, which is the image of O2.
• The position of O1 and O2 coincide.
• Thus when the angle of inclination between the mirrors is 900 we get three images.

Case III
Let us now calculate the number of images formed if the two mirrors are placed parallel to each other i.e., the angle
of inclination between them is 00.
• Place the mirrors MM and MM' parallel to each other.
• An object O is kept between these mirrors.
• OA and OO' represent the rays which are incident on the mirror MM.
• OO' being normal retraces its path.
• OA makes an angle i with the normal N1 and gets reflected along AB according to the laws of reflection.
• Extend the rays AB and OM backwards.
• They meet at I1, which is the virtual image of the object O.
• The reflected ray AB gets reflected by the mirror MM' and forms an image I2.
• Similarly I3, I4 etc. are formed.
• The light from I1, I2, I3, I4 etc. gets reflected and forms their images.
In this manner, many images are formed but the intensity of the remote images goes on decreasing due to absorption
of light energy at every successive reflection and thus we see only finite number of images even though infinite
images will be formed.