Reflection Of A Plane Mirror

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Plane Mirror Reflection
The most familiar mirror of all reflecting surfaces is the plane mirror. Visible light radiation is reflected through its making, which normally is consisted of a planar or flat piece of glass, on which a silver coating is placed which produces a reflection of the visible light radiation. The motion of this radiation, is inevitably, quite unique. Its motion is like a wave in nature, but it can be broken down by drawing rays that demonstrates the direction of the wave propagation. The use of the waves, allow individuals to decipher the common features of reflection, which includes a basic relation between angle of incidence and angle of reflection for the radiation that is in reflection from a surface. The meaning behind angle of incidence and angle of reflection deals with the angle between the respective ray, being incident or reflected, and a vector that is considered normal to the surface of the mirror. For a plane mirror, the vector that is normal is considered perpendicular to the plane of the mirror. There is a concept that relates to this that is called, “The law of Reflection,” which states that the incidence angle for an incident ray is equal to the reflective angle. Here is an illustration of this law:
Reflection of a Plane Mirror

The consequences that are associated with the law of reflection are quite intriguing. For instance, if you place an object (any object) in front of a mirror, the image appears to be at the same distance behind the mirror as it is in front of the mirror. Nonetheless, its appearance configures that it will appear to be situated at the same distance behind the mirror as the front. However, the image will actually be horizontally inverted (meaning the left of the imag...

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...gle with our naked eye). This error can occur in a lab when he observer’s eye is not squarely aligned with the instrument at hand being used. We may have read too high or too low of a value when using the protractor to determine an angle and our data may have been altered by a very small degree of numbers.
Lastly, personal errors may have affected our data points from small, yet costly things such as carelessness, poor technique, or even one of my group members being biased or myself. Being biased during this lab could have taken place because of a prejudgment we had towards how we hypothesized the data should have resulted in. Forcing data to equal to expected measurements in our angle may have caused a small alterations in our angle degrees. Personal human error always plays roles in skewing data during labs, and took place during the course of our lab as well.

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