Question

What is meant by reflection of light? Which type of objects reflects more light? What reflects light when we see the images of trees and other objects in a lake?

Answer 1

Hint: Light always shows three phenomenon’s Reflection, Transmission and Absorption.
When light falls on any surface then that surface will show all phenomena in different ratios and no surface will show only single phenomena because no ideal surface exists practically. Here we have to study for reflection only.

Complete step-by-step solution:
When Light falls on any surface then it shows three phenomenons:-
1. Reflection.
2. Refraction.
3. Absorption.

Reflection of light is the phenomenon of ray optics. In this phenomenon is observed that when the light ray is allowed to fall obliquely on a highly polished surface, such as a mirror, then most of the light gets reflected in the same medium.

Like in the figure incident ray comes in any medium obliquely and after striking the polished surface it bounces back in the same medium so it clears the phenomenon of reflection.
The light coming towards the reflecting surface is called incident ray and light after reflection bounces back in the same medium called reflected ray and a perpendicular ray to mirror is drawn called the normal ray. All these rays intersect at the common point called point of incidence and lie in the same plane.
The reflecting surface used in this phenomenon is a mirror.
The highly polished surface of the object reflects more light. Silver metal is one of the best reflectors of light.
When parallel rays of light strike the surface and after reflection they go parallel then that phenomenon is called regular reflection and for that surface is smooth and when after reflection light goes in a different direction after reflection then it is called irregular or diffused reflection and for that surface used in rough.
When light falls on the lake then water of the lake is acting like a plane mirror and does the reflection of trees and other objects.

Note:When any object is placed in front of a plane mirror, then the right side of object appears to be left side of image and left side of object appears to be right of image. The change of sides of an object and its mirror image is called lateral inversion. This phenomena happens when we stand in front of a mirror .