1. Light Technologies
Chapter 8

2. Concave and convex mirrors
If you look at your reflection in a spoon, your image might appear inverted (upside down). The attitude of an image describes whether the image is upright or upside down in relation to the object.

3. Concave and convex mirrors
Concave mirrors are curved like the inside of a bowl. These types of mirrors are often used in astronomers’ telescopes.
Convex mirrors curve outward, like a balloon.

4. Images formed by curved mirrors
A concave mirror can produce two types of images. If an obkect is close to the mirror, the image seen is upright and larger than the real object.
On the other hand, when the object is far from the concave mirror, the image is inverted and smaller than the real object.

5. Images formed by curved mirrors
Convex mirrors are more common than concave mirrors. Convex mirrors always produce small, upright images.
Because the image of each object is smaller in a convex mirror, you see more of the overall scene.

6. Stop and think
Where have you seen convex mirrors before? Why are they used?
Can you think of any uses for concave mirrors?

7. Lenses and vision
A lens is a curved piece of transparent material, such as glass or plastic. Light refracts as it passes through a lens, causing the rays to bend.
A concave lens is thinner and flatter in the middle than around the edges. Light passing through the thicker, more curved areas of the lens will bend more than light passing through flatter areas. This causes rays of light to spread out, or diverge, after passing through the lens.

9. Lenses and vision
A convex lens is thicker in the middle than around the edges. This causes the light to come together, or converge.

11. Lenses and images
Lenses are probably the most useful and important of all optical devices.
Eyeglasses were made from lenses are early as the 13th century.
The type of lens used in an optical device determines whether the image is real or virtual.

12. Lenses and images
An image forms where light rays from an object converge.
The light rays spread out from points on the object. A convex lens refracts these rays so that they come back together.

13. Lenses and images
However, the lens directs light from the left portion of the object to the right portion of the image.
Similarly, light from the top of the object is directed to the bottom of the image. Thus, an image formed by a convex lens is sometimes inverted rather than upright.

14. Lenses and images
Because your eyes sees the image of the flower by light rays that are actually coming from the image, the image is a real image.
An image on a movie screen is a real image since light actually travels from the screen to your eye.
Any image that can form on a screen is a real image. Both film projectors and overhead projectors used a convex lens to create real images.

16. Lenses and images
Sometimes, light rays only seem to come from the image.
Light rays are coming from the object as if they had started from behind the mirror. In fact, rays are just bounding off the mirror, so a virtual image is produced.

17. Lenses and images
Light rays do not actually come from a virtual image.
Plane mirrors always produce virtual images. Remember that if you cannot form an image on a screen, the image must be virtual.
Sometimes a convex lens can be used to product a virtual image, like when you use a magnifying glass.

18. Lenses in humans
Your eyes have convex lenses. This lens takes light rays that are spreading out from an object and, by refraction, focuses them, or brings them back to a point.
This focusing of light rays allows us to see objects,
In a normal eye, light refracts through the lens onto a light-sensitive area at the back of the eye called the retina. The image you see is formed on the retina.

19. Normal vision

20. Lenses in humans
For some people, the eye has a longer shape. This means the image forms in front of the retina. These people are near-sighted. They have trouble seeing distant objects.
A concave lens placed in front of the eye helps bend the light rays for that the image appears on the retina.

21. Near-sightedness

22. Lenses in humans
For other people, the eye has a shorter shape and the image has not formed by the time the light reaches the retina.
These people are far-sighted. They have trouble seeing objects that are close to them.
A convex lens helps far-sighted people.

23. Far-sightedness

24. Comparing the eye and the camera
There are many similarities between the human eye and the camera.
When you see objects, light is reflected to your eye, refracted through your lens, and focused on your retina.
In a camera, the lens refracts the light and the film senses the light.

25. Stop and think:
The word “optics” has not yet been defined, although nearly everything we’ve discussed in this unit is related to optics. Think about what you have been learning, and write your own definition for optics.

26. Putting it in focus
In a camera, if an object moves closer to the film, the lens must move farther away from the film to keep the image in focus. This is what you do when you focus the camera.
In the human eye, you cannot more the lens farther away from the retina. Instead, the ciliary muscles change the shape of the lens.
If the object you are looking at comes closer to you, these muscles make the lens bulge in the middle. This keeps the object in focus on the retina without having to stretch the eyeball.

27. Putting it in focus
The process of changing the shape of the lens to adjust for different object distances is called accommodation.
As people become older, the lens becomes less flexible and loses its ability to change shape. It can no longer focus on close objects. As a result, many older people wear convex lenses as reading glasses.

28. Putting it in focus
The shortest distance at which an object is in focus is called the near point of the eye. The longest distance is called the far point.
For the average adult human eye, the near point is about 25 cm away. However, babies can focus on objects only 7 cm away.
The far point is said to be infinity. Most people with normal vision are able to see the stars, and they can be many thousand of light years away.

29. Bringing in the light
If you are photographing a scene and a cloud suddenly covers the Sun, the brightness of the scene decreases. As a result, the amount of light reaching the film decreases.
If the light is too dim, the film will not receive enough light to record the image clearly.
In this case, the camera’s diaphragm and shutter can be adjusted to allow the correct amount of light to reach the film.

30. Bringing in the light
The diaphragm is a device that controls the aperture (the opening) of a lens or optical system.
The shutter is a device that limits the passage of light. The aperture in the diaphragm can let more light into the camera by being opened wider.
The shutter can let in more light by staying open longer.

31. Bringing in the light
In the human eye, the iris, which is the coloured ring, functions like the diaphragm of a camera.
If the light is dim, the iris increases the size of the eye’s opening to let in more light.
This opening is called the pupil, which appears as dark as the center of your eye.

32. Bringing in the light
The natural adjustment in the size of the pupils is called the iris reflex. You are generally unaware of this reflex, which is extremely rapid.
Think about what happens when you walk into a movie theater mid-afternoon. For the first few seconds, you probably have difficulty seeing. `
The split-second iris reflex is the first in a series of adjustments your eyes make to enable you to see in the dark movie theater.

33. Entrance slip Write down 3 things you’ve learned so far in this unit.
Write down 2 new vocabulary words you’ve learned.
Write down 1 question you have about optics.
Be prepared to share your answers .

34. Seeing the image
At the back of an old camera, you’ll find the film. The image is focused on this light-sensitive material. The light energy causes chemical changes in the film to record the image.
In the human eye, the retina senses the light. When the cells in the retina detect light, they create small electrical impulses that travel from the retina to the brain through the optic nerve.

35. Seeing the image
The point where the optic nerve enters the retina does not have any light-sensing cells. This point is called the blind spot.
The parts of a camera are contained in a rigid, light proof box. In the eyes, layers of tissue hold the different parts together. In order to keep the eye from collapsing, the eyeball is filled with fluids called humours. In addition to keeping the eye rigid, humours help refract the light that enters the eye.

36. Stop and think:
As an object comes closer to a convex lens, what happens to:
The size of the image?
The attitude of the image?

37. Mythbusters

38. Extending our vision
Human knowledge about our planet and the universe was very limited until we developed products to extend our vision, like telescopes, binoculars, and mircoscopes.

39. Telescopes
Telescopes help us see distant objects more clearly. In a refracting telescope, light from a distant object is collected and focused by a convex lens called the objective lens.
A second lens, called the eyepiece lens, work as a magnifying glass to enlarge the image.

41. Telescopes
A reflecting telescope uses a concave mirror to collect rays of light from a distant object. The mirror is called the primary or objective mirror.
It forms a real image, which is then magnified by the eyepiece lens.

42. Telescopes
The lens in a refracting telescope and the mirror in a reflecting telescope both act as a collector of light.
Reflecting and refracting telescopes must have a large collector (either a lens or a mirror) in order to gather as much light as possible from the distant object.
The collector then focuses the light into an image.

43. Telescopes
The farther the image is from the lens, the greater the magnification. Similarly, the farther the image is from the mirror in a reflecting telescope, the greater the magnification.
For the greatest magnification, the telescope needs to have as large a distance as possible between the object being viewed (like a star or a planet) and its image.

44. Binoculars
Binoculars are actually two reflecting telescopes mounted side by side.
You can imagine how difficult it would be to hold up two telescopes!
In binoculars, the telescopes are shortened by placing glass blocks inside. These glass blocks, called prisms, serve as plane mirrors.
Rather than travelling down the length of a telescope, light in binoculars is reflected back and forth inside a short tube.