Explanation

You might have noticed that when it's sunny outide, the sunlight gets reflected by jewelry or a phone screen.

When you've finished experiment 23.1, you will see that the angles you measured are about the same. This is called the law of reflection, in the picture below you can see how the reflection angle is the same as the angle of incidence.

 

If you want some extra explanaining about this law and how to use it, I made this video you can watch!

 

 

Periscope

Perhaps you ever wondered how a submarine could be under water, yet they still managed to look over the water. They can do this because they use a periscope. A periscope uses the law of reflection, by placing two different mirrors at certain angles.

If you want to make your own periscope, it is quite easy!
This way you can make your own periscope, pretty easy!

 

 

The image in a plane mirror

When an object is in front of a mirror, the mirror will show an image of this object. This image has the same distance to the mirror, as the object in frommt of it. So if you look in the mirror with a distance of 0,50 m, your image will also be 0,50 m from the mirror. The image in the mirror is called a virtual image, since it appears to be behind the mirror.

 

Regular and diffuse reflection

In this chapter we have discussed regular reflection by plane mirrors. But what happens when a mirror is curved? Then your reflection will be diffuse, meaning it is reflected in different directions.