Reflection and Refraction Study Guide

For the test over reflection and refraction, you should know:

• The characteristics of real and virtual images
• The relationship between the center of curvature and principal focus for spherical mirrors of small apertures
• What spherical aberration is and how it can be corrected.
• The two laws of reflection
• The image type, orientation, and location formed in plane mirrors
• The meaning of reflectance, principal axis, secondary axis, vertex, principal focus, focal plane, focal length, convex, concave, converging, diverging, diffused reflection, regular reflection, specular surface, plane mirror
• Convex mirrors have negative focal lengths and image distances.
• What the index of refraction means in terms of both the speed of light passing through the material and the angles of incidence and refraction.
• What the critical angle of a medium is and what its refracted angle is.
• How optical density of 2 media are related to incident and refracted angles between them.
• What f-numbers of lenses are.
• The primary colors of additive (light) and subtractive (pigment) mixing, and which are complements of each other.
• The factors that determine the observed color of an opaque object.
• Which direction light bends at a boundary
• The proportionality relationship between index of refraction and the sine of the incident and refracted angles.
• The factors that determine the color of light transmitted by a colored glass or filter.
• How the index of refraction of a prism depends on light wavelength or frequency.
• The cause of dispersion in prisms or water.

And be able to:

• Predict the type of image, orientation, size, location for an object at any location reflected in a convex or concave mirror.
• Draw a ray diagram to locate an image for either type spherical mirror.
• Label all major parts of a ray diagram (center of curvature, principal focus, principal axis, secondary axis, vertex, focal length)
• Use the mirror equation to calculate image position and size, given the necessary information.
• Describe images and/or construct ray diagrams for converging and diverging lenses.
• Describe lenses used in microscopes or telescopes and their resulting images.
• Calculate image location and size, given necessary data.
• Calculate the speed of light through a medium, given the index of refraction.