Mirrors: Basics
This type of mirror has a flat reflective surface.
What is a plane mirror?
This is the center of the circle that the mirror's edge is part of.
What is the center of curvature?
This ray begins parallel to the optical axis and after being reflected passes thorough the focal point.
What is a parallel ray?
When this is greater than zero our mirror is concave.
What is the focal length?
An image larger than the object occurs under these conditions.
What is an absolute value of m that is greater than one?
This type of mirror has its reflective surface on the inside of its curve.
What is a concave mirror?
This is the point where the mirror intersects its axis of symmetry.
What is the vertex?
This ray passes through the center of curvature and reflects back along its original path.
What is a center of curvature ray?
When the focal length is less than zero we have this kind of mirror.
What is a convex mirror?
This is true when the absolute value of m is less than one.
What is an image smaller than the initial object.
This type of mirror has its reflective surface on the outside of its curve.
What is a convex mirrror?
This imaginary line passes through both the vertex and the center of curvature.
What is the optical axis?
This ray strikes the vertex and reflects symmetrically about the optical axis.
What is a vertex ray?
When this value is greater than zero we have a real image.
Magnification m takes this form for spherical mirrors.
What is m=-di/do?
The direction of these are changed by mirrors.
What are light rays?
Parallel rays of light (or their backwards extensions) converge here after being reflected.
What is the focal point?
This ray passes through the focal point and reflects parallel to the optical axis.
What is a focal ray?
This type of image appears to be in front of the mirror.
What is a real image?
When m is greater than zero this can be said about the resulting image.
What is an upright image?
The reflection of an actual object produced by a mirror.
What is an image?
This value is obtained by dividing the radius of curvature by a factor of two.
What is the focal length?
The backwards extension of this ray after reflection follows the initial path of the unreflected ray.
What is the center of curvature ray?
The spherical mirror equation takes this form.
1/di + 1/do = 1/f
When a reflected image is inverted we know this to be the case.
What is a value of m that is less than zero?