Example

Question:

A mobile phone lies along the principal axis of a concave mirror, as shown in Fig. 9.7. Show by suitable diagram, the formation of its image. Explain why the magnification is not uniform. Will the distortion of image depend on the location of the phone with respect to the mirror?

Solution:

The ray diagram for the image formation is shown in Fig. 9.7.
The image of the part of the phone on a plane perpendicular to the principal axis will be on the same plane and be of the same size (\( \text{B'C} = \text{BC} \)).
The image is distorted because other parts of the phone do not lie on the same plane, so their images do not have the same magnification. Thus, the distortion depends on the location of the phone with respect to the mirror.