Reflection from a flat mirrorThe most familiar mirror of all reflecting surfaces is the flat mirror. Visible light radiation is reflected through its construction, which normally consists of a planar or flat piece of glass, on which a silver coating is placed which produces a reflection of visible light radiation. The movement of this radiation is, inevitably, completely unique. Its motion is in nature like a wave, but it can be broken down by drawing rays that demonstrate the direction of the wave's propagation. The use of waves allows individuals to decipher the common characteristics of reflection, which includes a fundamental relationship between angle of incidence and angle of reflection for radiation reflected from a surface. The meaning of angle of incidence and angle of reflection concerns the angle between the respective ray, incident or reflected, and a vector considered normal to the mirror surface. For a flat mirror, the normal vector is considered to be perpendicular to the plane of the mirror. There is a concept related to this called "The Law of Reflection", which states that the angle of incidence of an incident ray is equal to the reflecting angle. Here is an illustration of this law:Reflection of a flat mirrorThe consequences associated with the law of reflection are quite intriguing. For example, if you place an object (any object) in front of a mirror, the image will appear to be the same distance behind the mirror as it is in front of the mirror. However, its appearance means that it will appear to be located the same distance behind the mirror as in front. However, the image will actually be flipped horizontally (i.e. the left of the image...the center of the paper...visible to the naked eye). This error can occur in the laboratory when the observer's eye is not perfectly aligned with the instrument used. We may have read too high or too low when using the protractor to determine an angle, and our data may have been skewed by a very small number of numbers. Finally, personal errors could have affected our data points by small, but costly things like inattention, poor technique, or even one of my group members being biased or myself. Being biased during this lab may have been due to a bias we had regarding how we assumed the data should turn out. Forcing the data to match the expected measurements in our angle may have caused small alterations in the degrees of the angle. Personal human error always plays a major role in distorting data during labs and occurred during our lab as well.