Soph Case

Purpose:

The purpose of this lab is to find the relationship between the location of an object in subject to the lens, and the image that it forms.

Hypothesis:

I think that a convex lens and mirror will make the image of the light bigger, while the concave lens will make it smaller. This is because through the shape of them, the convex lens and mirror are projecting the light in a wider range of directions, while the concave is coercing them to a single point. Also, I think that as each one moves away, the image will get smaller. This is because as it moves farther away, there are less light rays hitting it, therefore it will project less rays itself.

We approached this lab by setting up our own candle and lens in order to see for ourselves what actually happens. We placed the candle at one end of a metal pole, and adjusted the placement of the lens for each trial. We used a notecard in order to locate the Question 4: When comparing the results of lenses versus mirrors, there are more similarities between the concave lens and convex mirror than with the convex lens. As the Do of the convex mirror and concave lens goes up, their Di and focal length stay in around the same range. Their focal lengths also initially go down, then slightly up, and then down again. With the convex lens, the Di dramatically increases, and then returns to its original number. The focal length also has a much wider range of numbers, while the convex mirror focal lengths do not.

Question 5: Another aspect of this lab was comparing real and virtual images. I learned that a real image is formed when the rays of light reflects off the surface and converge to one point. A virtual image is formed when the rays don't actually converge, but if you continue to look at them through the mirror they appear to converge on the other side. Applying this to our lab, the convex lens or concave mirrors can produce real images because the rays are being converged to a certain point, but this is only true if the object is further away from the lens than the focal point. When it passes the focal point, the image is no longer inverted, therefore no longer real. The convex mirror and concave lens produce virtual images as well. The convex mirror produced images that appeared to go past the surface of the mirror, making it a trick to the eye and a virtual image.

Question 6: In order to determine the focal length experimentally, you would measure the distance between the mirror or lens, and the focus of the projected image.

Question 7: There are mathematical observations made when noticing the relationship between Do and the focal length. One such is in the convex lens, when