ABSTRACT
This chapter presents three experimental lab cases that cover the formation of images of an object placed in front of a spherical mirror. The student will study the image formation using the ray-tracing method with experimental measurements and calculations. The cases are: image formation by concave mirrors; image formation by convex mirrors; and image formation by two spherical concave mirrors. Like plane mirrors, spherical mirrors are a common type of mirror used in many applications. Spherical mirrors are similar to plane mirrors in image formation, but instead of being made from a flat piece of glass, spherical mirrors have the shape of a section from the surface of a hollow sphere. Spherical mirrors are used in many applications, such as simple reflections, collimating, light convergence and divergence, and reflecting telescopes. The chapter is based on the first law of light, which is called the law of reflection.
