Plane Mirror
In the previous section we described the law of reflection, and now we will see that this simple law will help us understand how reflective surfaces create images. We will focus on mirrors as the standard reflective surface, although there are many other surfaces such as a clear lake which can produce a sharp reflective images. Let us start with the most standard mirror which we use in our daily lives. This mirror is known as the plane mirror, simply due to its flat shape.
Below is an example of an optical setup for a plane mirror depicted as a vertical line with the reflective surface on the left side. A physical object is placed in front of the reflective surface of the plane mirror. The horizontal dashed line that is perpendicular to the mirror is known as the optical axis, a reference from which we measure the heights of the objects and images formed.
Figure 10.3.1: Image Formation by Plane Mirror
The “object” could be any physical object or a source of light, but we often depict it as an upright arrow. The arrowhead will allow us to distinguish between upright and upside down orientations since, as we will see shortly, some images will have inverted orientations. The object emanates rays in all direction. Some of those rays hit the reflective surface of the mirror and reflect back. An observer standing in front of the mirror will then detect the reflected rays and interpret them as originating from some location from which the rays take a straight path. In other words, the observer detecting the reflected rays does not have any information about the ray initially reflecting before reaching the eyes of the observer.
For convenience, we often choose a few rays originating from the tip of the arrow to analyze. The distinction between the bottom and the top of the arrow is relevant since it will allow us to determine the orientation of the image. In addition, it enables us to find the location of the image of the tip of the object, from which we can extrapolate the image of the remaining object.
In Figure 10.3.1 above we choose three rays and apply the law of reflection to find the path of the reflected rays. The ray which is parallel to the optical axis will meet the mirror perpendicular to its surface (or parallel to the surface normal), which means that it will reflect right back along the same line. To other two rays are shown with the incident angle equal to the reflected angle relative to the surface normal.
In order to determine where the three reflected rays appear to be coming from to the observer, we trace the rays back to determine if they intersect. The location where all three rays meet will be the position of the image of the arrow’s tip, since all three rays originated from the tip. As we see from the figure the reflected rays do not cross anywhere in front of the mirror. However, if you continue tracing the rays behind the mirror, you find a specific location where all of them cross. If you drew more rays originating from the tip of the object and applied the law of reflection at the surface of the mirror, you would find that those rays when traced back would also meet at the same location behind the mirror. Since all the rays originating from the object appear to be coming from the location behind the mirror, we observe the image of the object behind the mirror. An image is the appearance of the object at a location different from the physical object.
The reason why the lines behind the mirror are drawn with dashes is that the they are no longer physical rays, but simply the extrapolation of the rays to the location behind the mirror. There is no light penetrating the mirror, yet every time we look in a mirror we see ourself as if appearing from behind the mirror. This type of image is known as virtual, since it is not real light rays that form the image, but rather the tracing of real rays to the location of the image. This definition of a virtual image will become more relevant later, when we compare virtual images to real ones.
The ray that is perpendicular to the mirror and reflects along the same line establishes the fact that the height of the object, (h_o), is equal to the height of the image, (h_i). This means that the image is neither magnified (enlarged) or de-magnified (reduced), but remains the same size as the object. (Below we will encounter other types of mirrors which can indeed create magnified or de-magnified images). The distance from the mirror to the object is known as the object distance, o. The distance from the mirror to the location of the image is known as the image distance, i. The two right triangles in Figure 10.3.1, one from the optical axis at the mirror to the tip of the object and the other to the tip of the image are identical. From this we can conclude that the object distance is equal to the image distance.