written by Wolfgang Christian and Francisco Esquembre

The Concave Mirror Model shows three principal rays leaving a candle of height h and striking a concave mirror.  The first ray is parallel to the optic axis and is reflected back through the focal point.  The second ray strikes the mirror on the optic axis a distance h below the flame.  The third ray passes through the focal point and reflects parallel to the optic axis.  All three rays cross at the image location in accord with the small angle approximation and the principles of geometric optics.

The Concave Mirror Model was developed using the Easy Java Simulations (EJS) modeling tool.  It is distributed as a ready-to-run (compiled) Java archive.   Double clicking the jar file will run the program if Java is installed.  You can modify this simulation if you have EJS installed by right-clicking within the map and selecting "Open Ejs Model" from the pop-up menu item.

• Download ejs_optics_ConcaveMirror.jar - 1996kb Java Archive File

Last Modified June 3, 2014

This file has previous versions.

The source code zip archive contains an EJS-XML representation of the Concave Mirror Model.   Unzip this archive in your EJS workspace to compile and run this model using EJS.

• Download ejs_optics_ConcaveMirror.zip - 21kb Compressed File

Last Modified April 12, 2012