Practice portal › Ray Optics and Optical Instruments › Reflection by Plane and Spherical Mirrors
Asked in GSEB Board March 2023 · Plane mirrors
Given: a mirror and a lens.
Idea: ask what the light does at the surface in each case.
At a mirror the light never enters the material: it turns back into the medium it came from, obeying the law of reflection, angle of incidence equal to angle of reflection.
At a lens the light crosses into the glass and out again, changing direction at each surface because its speed changes -- that is refraction, governed by Snell's law.
Interference and diffraction are wave effects needing coherent sources or narrow apertures; they are not how everyday mirrors and lenses build images.
So the phenomena are reflection for the mirror and refraction for the lens.
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