Search results
Results from the WOW.Com Content Network
A reflection through an axis. In mathematics, a reflection (also spelled reflexion) [1] is a mapping from a Euclidean space to itself that is an isometry with a hyperplane as the set of fixed points; this set is called the axis (in dimension 2) or plane (in dimension 3) of reflection.
A diagram of an object in two plane mirrors that formed an angle bigger than 90 degrees, causing the object to have three reflections. A plane mirror is a mirror with a flat reflective surface. [1] [2] For light rays striking a plane mirror, the angle of reflection equals the angle of incidence. [3]
The set of all reflections in lines through the origin and rotations about the origin, together with the operation of composition of reflections and rotations, forms a group. The group has an identity: Rot(0). Every rotation Rot(φ) has an inverse Rot(−φ). Every reflection Ref(θ) is its own inverse. Composition has closure and is ...
Thus reflection is a reversal of the coordinate axis perpendicular to the mirror's surface. Although a plane mirror reverses an object only in the direction normal to the mirror surface, this turns the entire three-dimensional image seen in the mirror inside-out, so there is a perception of a left-right reversal. Hence, the reversal is somewhat ...
Then the xz plane is the interface, and the y axis is normal to the interface (see diagram). Let i and j (in bold roman type) be the unit vectors in the x and y directions, respectively. Let the plane of incidence be the xy plane (the plane of the page), with the angle of incidence θ i measured from j towards i.
Reflection. Reflections, or mirror isometries, denoted by F c,v, where c is a point in the plane and v is a unit vector in R 2.(F is for "flip".) have the effect of reflecting the point p in the line L that is perpendicular to v and that passes through c.
A plane serves as a mathematical model for many physical phenomena, such as specular reflection in a plane mirror or wavefronts in a traveling plane wave. The free surface of undisturbed liquids tends to be nearly flat (see flatness). The flattest surface ever manufactured is a quantum-stabilized atom mirror. [11]
Hero of Alexandria, in his Catoptrics (1st century CE), showed that the ordinary law of reflection off a plane surface follows from the premise that the total length of the ray path is a minimum. [35] Ibn al-Haytham, an 11th-century polymath later extended this principle to refraction, hence giving an early version of the Fermat's principle ...