Wednesday, July 20, 2011

Unit 10 - Electromagnetic Waves

A flat mirror will reflect a virtual image. That is an image where the light rays do not come together. The distance of the object to the mirror will also equal the distance between the mirror and the image. Basically if you stand in front of a flat mirror you will see yourself as you appear.
If we bend the mirror so that it has convex or concave curvature then images become altered. The object is no longer perpendicular to the mirror and in line with the normal. The normal is always perpendicular to the mirror, but the object is not. Now there is an angle between the object and the normal so that bends the image. This is what makes fun house mirrors so fun and Cloud Gate, this giant bean mirror, so eye catching. We are not used to seeing things warped and stretched like they do in these mirrors. That is the magic of mirrors bending images.

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