Why does a shiny surface reflect light

For example, if you look at a bird, light has reflected off that bird and travelled in nearly all directions. If some of that light enters your eyes, it hits the retina at the back of your eyes. An electrical signal is passed to your brain, and your brain interprets the signals as an image. The angle at which light hits a reflecting surface is called the angle of incidence, and the angle at which light bounces off a reflecting surface is called the angle of reflection.

If you measure the angle of incidence and the angle of reflection against the normal, the angle of incidence is exactly the same as the angle of reflection. With a flat mirror, it is easy to show that the angle of reflection is the same as the angle of incidence. Water is also a reflective surface. When the water in a lake or sea is very still, the reflection of the landscape is perfect, because the reflecting surface is very flat.

However, if there are ripples or waves in the water, the reflection becomes distorted. This is because the reflecting surface is no longer flat and may have humps and troughs caused by the wind. It is possible to make mirrors that behave like humps or troughs, and because of the different way they reflect light, they can be very useful. Concave mirrors are used in certain types of astronomical telescopes called reflecting telescopes.

The mirrors condense lots of light from faint sources in space onto a much smaller viewing area and allow the viewer to see far away objects and events in space that would be invisible to the naked eye. Light rays travel towards the mirror in a straight line and are reflected inwards to meet at a point called the focal point. Concave mirrors are useful for make-up mirrors because they can make things seem larger. This concave shape is also useful for car headlights and satellite dishes.

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