Activity Overview

Having worked with plane mirrors in Activity 5, students now investigate curved mirrors. As in Activity 5, students begin by shining parallel light beams at the curved mirrors to record the pattern of reflection. From these patterns students find the focal length and the location of the focus. With a small light bulb, students look for real and virtual images. For the concave mirror, students draw a graph of the image distance vs. the object distance. To use a quantitative model of reflection, students examine an equation that relates image distance, object distance, and focal length.