CENCO® AP Physics Lab 2.17: Reflecting Light with Mirrors

Study rays reflecting off plane and curved mirrors, determine the focal length of a curved mirror.

Introducing the new CENCO AP Physics lab series!

Ideal for AP Physics 1 and 2, AP Physics C, IB DP Physics, and advanced/honors physics courses, each of the 35 experiments is aligned with the revised College Board AP curriculum. These innovative labs go way beyond traditional exercises, turning real to world scenarios into true guided to inquiry investigations. Students are given a goal, but the investigation is driven by their ideas. As they draw conclusions, students report their results using the Claim to Evidence to Reasoning model. The teacher guides and student manuals are authored and reviewed by AP Physics teachers with decades of combined experience, so you can trust the setups to be successful in your classroom. All labs come complete with instructions and materials for one lab group of 2 to 4 students. For your convenience, labs are packaged to allow you to purchase only what is required for each experiment.

In this four-part activity, students will first explore how light reflects off a planar surface using a semi-transparent mirror. They will discover the distance and size relationships between object and image, as well as the relationship between the angles of incidence and reflection. They will consider how reflection creates a reverser “mirror image” using handwriting. In parts 3 and 4, students will compare concave and convex mirrors, discovering the relationships between distance, size, and orientation of the object and image for curved surfaces. Finally, they will determine the focal length and magnification of a concave mirror.