The purpose of this experiment is to understand the law of reflection using the simplest way to see the phenomenon.

My hypothesis for this experiment is that we will be able to see the basic laws of reflections being applied when shooting the light to a plane surface mirror and that the angle of incidence will equal the reflected ray.

Experimental Method:

        The way that this experiment will serve its purpose is by using a mirror and the appropriate equipment to observe the law of reflection of light being applied.

        Install carefully the ray table and base and the optic bench on it. Plug in the light source and place it on the ray table. Use a slit plate to make a thin beam of light. Take a slit mask to reduce all the different beams of light into one straight one that point to the component holder that u will place right in front of the light source. On the component holder place the ray optics mirror (the flat surface facing the light source), and turn the holder in such a way that the beam of light is lined with the mark that says 0°. Then turn the holder to place the ray on the 10° mark and record the reflected ray. Repeat this for every 10° until you reach the mark that says 90°.

Data Collection:

Discussion and Evaluation:

While performing this experiment with my classmates we realized that the results were most of the time the same for both trials. The differences that we found could be attributed to the fact that the closer the light beam was to the 90° mark the less visible it became. Therefore at the end it became harder for us to see precisely where the reflected ray had landed. Most of the results that were found were as expected and there was nothing to prove it otherwise, except some minor changes in the result due to our personal error. Most of our classmates got the same result as we did, they were very similar and they too believe that the main reason why there is change could be do to incorrect reading. In this experiment one may have observed that the ray of incidence, the reflected ray and the normal laid in the same plane. This was shown because one could see the all those three elements being in the same half of the holder which is divided into four quatrains that each are labeled from angle 0° to 90°.This part of the experiment could be improved by using a holder that is calibrated to smaller degrees. The relationship that was observed between the angle of reflection and the angle of incidence is that they are equal and they lay in the same plain, therefore they do follow the laws of reflection. The procedure of this experiment was adequately stated and we were able to follow it very easily. All the equipment were used appropriately, and this procedure was very good for the purpose of this experiment.

Conclusion:

        Our findings from this experiment is that we were able to observe the phenomenon of reflection using a very simple technique. I hypothesized that we would be able to observe the laws of reflection by shooting light at a smooth surface mirror, and find out that the angle of incidence would equal the angle of the reflection in respect to the normal. My hypothesis, therefore, was proven correct for our result show exactly what was attempted in this experiment to be true. What was proven in this experiment is that it is possible to observe the laws reflection without using extremely high technological equipment.

Bibliography:

• “Experiment 2: The Law of Reflection.” Pasco Science. Introductory Optic System.
• “Optics-Reflection and Refraction” Microsoft Encarta. Encarta Encyclopedia. 98.