Electric room heaters use a concave mirror to reflect infrared (IR) radiation from hot coils. Note that IR follows the same law of reflection as visible light. Given that the mirror has a radius of curvature of 50.0 cm and produces an image of the coils 3.00 m away from the mirror, where are the coils?

Strategy and Concept

We are given that the concave mirror projects a real image of the coils at an image distance d_i = 3.00 m. The coils are the object, and we are asked to find their location-that is, to find the object distance d_o. We are also given the radius of curvature of the mirror, so that its focal length is f = R/2 = 25.0 cm (positive since the mirror is concave or converging). Assuming the mirror is small compared with its radius of curvature, we can use the thin lens equations, to solve this problem.

Transcribed Image Text:

4 h h 1 -do- 3 2 2 -di- 3 1