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Lab Report - Experiment No 1

The purpose of the experiment was to verify the law of reflection - that the angle of incidence is equal to the angle of reflection. The experiment involved directing a laser beam at a plane mirror and measuring the angle of incidence and reflection using a protractor. The measurements showed that the angles were equal, with no error, verifying the law of reflection.

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Jawad Haider
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304 views3 pages

Lab Report - Experiment No 1

The purpose of the experiment was to verify the law of reflection - that the angle of incidence is equal to the angle of reflection. The experiment involved directing a laser beam at a plane mirror and measuring the angle of incidence and reflection using a protractor. The measurements showed that the angles were equal, with no error, verifying the law of reflection.

Uploaded by

Jawad Haider
Copyright
© © All Rights Reserved
We take content rights seriously. If you suspect this is your content, claim it here.
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Download as PDF, TXT or read online on Scribd
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Experiment No.

1
REFLECTION OF LIGHT

Purpose
To determine the general principle which describes the way light reflects off a plane
mirror.

Abstract
The angle of incidence is equal to angle of reflection.

θi = θr
Apparatus
• Laser
• Mirror
• Protractor
• Paper pines
• A sheet of paper

Theory
In this experiment we wanted to prove that the angle of incidence is equal to
angle of reflection
Angle of incidence
in geometric optics the angle of incidence is the angle between a ray incident on a
surface and the line perpendicular to the surface at a point of incidence called the
normal.
Angle of reflection
the angle between a reflected ray and the normal drawn at a point of incidents to a
reflecting surface.
Laser
laser is a device that stimulates atoms or molecules to emit light at wavelengths and
amplifies the light, typically providing a very narrow beam of radiation.
Mirror
a reflecting surface that does not allow the light to pass through and bounces of the
light beam which produce an image.
Protector
A measuring instrument typically made of transparent plastic for measurement of
angles.
when light is incident on a surface, some of it is transmitted. A plane mirror is a
highly polished surface which minimal absorption or refraction of light rays nearly all the
light is reflected. there are numerous rays coming from a single source. However, when
analyzing the behavior of light using the ray model, we have used only one ray to show
the rays and image formation hand represent it in the form of ray diagram.

Procedure
1) we placed a plane mirror in an upright orientation on a sheet of clean paper.
2) then we directed a beam of light from laser which reflected the mirror. by
adjusting the mirror perpendicular to laser, we drew a normal to the surface of
plane mirror.
3) we again directed the beam at an angle and the path of light was visible on the
paper.
4) we applied paper pins on the path of incident and reflected beams and traced the
incident and reflected rays.
5) then by using protector, we measured the angle of incident and angle of
reflection by respect to normal.
6) we performed this experiment three times and took the readings of angles of
incidence and reflection.
7) from all the three readings we calculated average.
8) at the end we calculated the percentage error.
Reading

Reading No. Angle of Incident θi Angle of Reflection θr

------------------------------- ------------------------------- -------------------------------


1 30° 30°

2 40° 40°

3 50° 50°

Result
the angle at which light beam is incident is perfectly equal to angle with which it is
reflected the error is 0%.

Precautions
1) The use of stand to hold the mirror will give better results and the chances of
error will be reduced.
2) The experiment should be performed in a dark room to detect clearly the path of
light.

Conclusion
Law of reflection is verified i.e.

1) The angle of incident is equal to angle of reflection θi = θr.


2) Incident ray, normal ray and reflected ray all lie in the same plane

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