plane mirror angle of incidence angle of reflection

Have you noticed anything about the angle of incidence (i) and angle of reflection (r)? They're always the same, regardless of what the angle is! Okay, this time we'll try a larger angle of incidence: 80 o.įinally, let's try one somewhere inbetween 55 o. In a periscope, light from an object strikes the top mirror at 45° and bounces off at the same angle. Its important that your mirrors are placed at a 45° angle, because light always reflects away from a mirror at the same angle that it hits it.

The angle between the incident ray and the normal is called the angle of incidence, and the angle reflected ray and the normal is called the angle of reflection. A periscope is a useful example of the law of reflection at work. This dotted line is called the normal, and is always at right-angles to the mirror. Note that the angle is measured between the light ray and the dotted line (NOT between the light ray and the mirror). In this lab, you will study the image formation by plane mirrors using an online simulation (Fig. Let's start with a small angle, say 20 o. the angle of reflection ( r) equals the angle of incidence ( i), r i (1) The normal, incident ray and reflected ray all lie in the same plane (Fig. (The first beam is known as the incident ray, and the reflected beam is called the reflected ray).

In our experiment, we'll shine a beam of light onto a mirror at different angles, and see what happens to the beam that reflects off the mirror.

Plane mirror angle of incidence angle of reflection