Prof. Williams
2.24.2020
Reflection and Refraction of Light
Purpose: The purpose of this experiment was demonstrating reflection and refraction of light.
With completing this experiment, we were able to see the law of reflection and also visualize
Snell's law for refraction of light. Reflection and refraction are two of the most commonly
properties of light.
Equipment list: Pins, Sheet of carboard, Ruler and protractor, Rectangular flat mirror and block,
Thick glass plate, Sheets of white paper
Procedure:
Refraction:
1. First, we drew a line MN across the middle of a plane sheet of paper. Then we put the
paper on a carboard and fixed it on the carboard with pins. Then a flat mirror was placed vertically
on the drawn line, where the edges of the mirror coincided with MN line, and was supported with
wooden blocks. Then one pin was placed vertically at the distance about 7 cm in front of the
reflecting side of the mirror. Then we randomly placed two other pins vertically at the points D
and E. We normal line form those pins to the line MN and named the intersected pints O and O'.
We rotated the board, so we reached a point that the image of original pin P was exactly on the
image of placed pin at point D. Then we drew a line along the ruler from the point (point A) that
this image was seen. The angle of AOD must be greater than 30. We have done the same
procedure for the placed pin (point E) at other side of the object and drew a line from point B so
the line intersected with the mirror. We continued the sight lines and named their intersects point
P'. This point is the image position of the object P in the mirror.
Figure 1
2. For the second part of refraction experiment, we placed a pin horizontally in front of the
mirror. We have repeated the same procedure as the previous step, however the sight lines has to
be drawn two times. First set of sight lines was for the tip of the object, and the second set of sight
lines was for the tail of the object. We drew 4 sight lines, so they intersected with the MN line
We continued the sight lines for the tip and tale and named their intersects Tail and Tip. Then we
measured the image position and size.
3. First, we drew a line across the middle of a plane sheet of paper and placed a flat mirror
on the drawn line. Then we placed the second flat mirror in a position so the edges of two mirrors
were at the right angle. Then we placed a pin between two mirrors and recorded the number of
seen objects. We also marked the approximated position of the images as points on the paper and
behind the mirrors.
Figure 2
900
Object
4. On this part, we have repeated the same procedure as part 3. However, we