Mirrors> All light rays bounce off flat mirrors at the same angle they strike the mirror at. Angle out equals angle in. It’s the law! The Law of Reflection, actually! All the properties of mirrors come from this simple rule.
When you look in a flat mirror, you see. . . yourself! Actually, you see a reflection of yourself, since every light ray that reaches your eyes has been turned around in the same way by bouncing off the mirror.
But curved fun house mirrors are funny because they make your reflection bigger, smaller, fatter, or skinnier. The mirrors curve every which way, and bounce different light rays back in different directions. You don’t really look anything like you do in a fun house mirror, do you?
A mirror shaped like the inside of a soup bowl is called a concave mirror. Light rays hitting a concave mirror bounce back toward a single spot near the mirror called the focus. Because concave mirrors gather light and concentrate it at a focus, they are used in telescopes, searchlights, and solar furnaces. Make up mirrors are concave. Look closely into one and your face will appear to be bigger.
A mirror shaped like the outside of a soup bowl is called a convex mirror. Light rays hitting a convex mirror bounce back, heading outward in all directions, as if they had come from a single focus spot behind the mirror. It’s just the opposite of a concave mirror! Look in a convex mirror, and you can see widely in all directions, but everything looks smaller than it really is. Security mirrors in shops and some car and truck mirrors are convex, so you can see a wider view.
