Physics 3 - Light and Sound - Curved Mirrors

Revision Cards for Curved Mirrors, hope this helps! :]

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Curved Mirrors

The concave mirror:

When you look into a concave mirror:

- If close up, you will see and enlarged image of your face

- If you retreat from the mirror and your image will retreat and become blurred

- If you keep moving backwards, your image will reappear upside down and smaller.

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Curved Mirrors 2

Image formation by a concave mirror:

For a distant point object, the light rays are effectively parallel when they reach the mirror. They are then focused to the principal focus (or focal point), 'F', of the mirror. A real image of the object is formed here. The distance from the mirror to the principal focus is called the focal length, 'f', of the mirror.

For an object beyond the principal focus, an inverted real image is formed by the reflected rays. The position and size of the image depends on the distance from the object to the mirror. The magnification of the image is:

the image height/the object height

For an object between the focal point and the mirror, the reflected rays form an upright virtual image of the object. 

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Curved Mirrors

The convex mirror:

We use convex mirrors as rear-view mirrors in cars. The driver has a much wider field of view than with a plane mirror. 

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