The Law of Reflection

The law of reflection is pretty simple, and not particularly enlightening. However, it will play a part in our discussion of mirrors, so we will include a brief description of it here.


Basically, the law of reflection says that a light ray and its reflection make equal angles with the normal to the reflecting surface:

A basic illustration of reflection.

Of course, the reflecting surface need not be flat; consider a circular reflector:

A circular reflector.

As the learned reader knows, rays along radii of a circle coincide with the normals to the circumference at those radii.


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