An object is placed 50cm in front of a plane mirror.
Find the distance of the image.
Find the magnification of the image
Huh?
Try it.
Your image is 50 cm behind mirror if you are 50 cm in front and it is your size.
What about magnification
To find the distance of the image formed by a plane mirror, we can use the mirror formula:
1/f = 1/di + 1/do
Where:
f is the focal length of the mirror
di is the distance of the image from the mirror
do is the distance of the object from the mirror
In the case of a plane mirror, the focal length is considered to be infinite, which means that the mirror does not converge or diverge light rays. Therefore, we can assume that 1/f is equal to 0.
Using the equation, we can simplify it as:
1/0 = 1/di + 1/50
As division by zero is undefined, 1/0 cannot be calculated. Hence, we can conclude that the distance of the image formed by a plane mirror is always the same as the distance of the object from the mirror. In this case, the distance of the image would be 50cm.
Moving on to the magnification of the image, it is given by the formula:
magnification (m) = -di/do
Where:
magnification (m) represents the size of the image relative to the size of the object.
di is the distance of the image from the mirror
do is the distance of the object from the mirror
Considering the previous result, where di = do = 50cm, we can calculate the magnification:
magnification (m) = -50/50 = -1
The negative sign indicates that the image is virtual (formed behind the mirror) and upright, which is characteristic of plane mirrors. The magnification of the image is 1, meaning that the image is the same size as the object.