Reflecting inside a Spherical Mirror and a Catacaustic

Initializing live version
Download to Desktop

Requires a Wolfram Notebook System

Interact on desktop, mobile and cloud with the free Wolfram Player or other Wolfram Language products.

This Demonstration shows an image formed inside a spherical mirror of radius and center on the optical axis . Let the point be off and let be the orthogonal projection of onto . After reflection, the reflection of the ray parallel to from meets the ray at the point . The notion of image of a point is not uniquely defined because the reflections of three rays from a given point do not meet in a single point. The image of the directed segment is a vertical segment with endpoint as . If you increase the height of , moves to the right.

[more]

The catacaustic is also shown.

[less]

Contributed by: Izidor Hafner (January 2019)
Open content licensed under CC BY-NC-SA


Details


Snapshots



Feedback (field required)
Email (field required) Name
Occupation Organization
Note: Your message & contact information may be shared with the author of any specific Demonstration for which you give feedback.
Send