Spherical Mirrors

A spherical mirror is a mirror which has the shape of a piece cut out of a spherical surface. There are two types of spherical mirrors 1 :Concave Mirrors 2:Convex Mirrors Concave Mirror : A concave mirror, or converging mirror, has a reflecting surface that bulges inward (away from the incident light). Concave mirrors reflect light inward to one focal point .They are used to focus light. Unlike convex mirrors, concave mirrors show different image types depending on the distance between the object and the mirror. These mirrors are called "converging" because they tend to collect light that falls on them, refocusing parallel incoming rays toward a focus. This is because the light is reflected at different angles, since the normal to the surface differs with each spot on the mirror. The most commonly occurring examples of concave mirrors are shaving mirrors and makeup mirrors. As is well-known, these types of mirrors magnify objects placed close to them.

Convex mirror : A convex mirror, fish eye mirror or diverging mirror, is a curved mirror in which the reflective surface bulges toward the light source. Convex mirrors reflect light outwards, therefore they are not used to focus light. The most commonly occurring examples of convex mirrors are the passenger-side wing mirrors of cars. These type of mirrors have wider fields of view than equivalent flat mirrors, but objects which appear in them generally look smaller (and, therefore, farther away) than they actually are.

mirror

A concave (left) and a convex (right)

Image Formed By Concave Spherical mirrors

Let us now introduce a few key concepts which are needed to study image formation by a concave spherical mirror. Principal Axix : The normal to the centre of the mirror is called the principal axis. The mirror is assumed to be rotationally symmetric about this axis. Hence, we can represent a three-dimensional mirror in a two-dimensional diagram, without loss of generality. The point at which the principal axis touches the surface of the mirror is called the vertex. The point , on the principal axis, which is equidistant from all points on the reflecting surface of the mirror is called the centre of curvature.

The distance along the principal axis from point to point called the radius of curvature of the mirror, and is

is

denoted . It is found experimentally that rays striking a concave mirror parallel to its principal axis, and not too far away from this axis, are reflected by the mirror such that they all pass through the same point on the principal axis. This point, which is lies between the centre of curvature and the vertex, is called the focal point, or focus, of the mirror. The distance along the principal axis from the focus to the vertex is called the focal length of the mirror, and is denoted

There are three primary rays which are used to locate the images formed by converging mirrors. Each ray starts from the top of the object.
Ray runs parallel to the axis until it reaches the mirror; then it reflects #1 (pink) the mirror and leaves along a path that passes through the

off

mirror's focus

Ray runs straight through the center of the mirror, reflects off the mirror, #2 and reflects through the center, never bending (gold)

Ray first passes through the focal point until it reaches the mirror; then it #3 reflects off the mirror and leaves parallel to the mirror's axis (aqua)

Remember that ALL rays must have arrows! When all three rays meet, they will form the image. Also, the larger the aperture (or opening) of the mirror, the less aberration you will experience with your ray diagrams, that is, larger radii mirrors make better ray diagrams. In some textbooks, the mirror is actually represented by a vertical line labeled as a mirror.

For concave (converging) mirrors, as long as the object is placed greater than one focal length in front of the mirror (our first four cases), a real image is produced. When the object is placed exactly one focal length in front of the mirror, no image is formed since the rays reflected from the mirror are parallel and can never intersect either in front of or behind the mirror. When the image is placed within one focal length of the mirror a virtual, enlarged image is formed when the reflected, diverging rays, are "dotted back" behind the mirror. Concave spherical mirrors are considered to be positive mirrors since their mirrored surface faces "towards the center of the sphere" (our mylar beach ball). Always remember, virtual images are formed by diverging rays; while real images are always formed by converging rays. It is also important to be aware that mirrors can be classified according to the characteristics of the virtual images they form: plane mirrors: virtual images are the same size as their objects concave spherical mirrors: virtual images are larger that their objects convex spherical mirrors: virtual images are smaller than their objects