🧭 Plot Summary
Light travels in straight lines until it hits something. When it hits a smooth, shiny surface, it bounces, and it bounces by a rule so precise you can predict it to the degree. That rule is the law of reflection, and it explains everything from your bathroom mirror to a car’s side mirror to a telescope.
You’ll test the rule with a beam of light and a protractor, find out where the image in a flat mirror really is, and then bend the surface. A shiny spoon turns out to be two mirrors in one: one side flips and magnifies you, the other shrinks you. By the end you’ll understand how two flat mirrors make a periscope, which is exactly what you could build in Project 6-1-4.
What you will do in this activity
- Aim light at a mirror and measure the angle it bounces off at, until the rule is obvious.
- Find out where the image in a flat mirror really is, with a ray diagram.
- Use a shiny spoon to meet curved mirrors, and discover why your reflection flips, grows, or shrinks.
- Work out how tall a mirror has to be for you to see your whole body.
- See how two flat mirrors can bend a light path around a corner, the idea behind a periscope.
Why it matters
Reflection is the first of the three tricks light can do: bounce, bend, and focus. This unit takes them in that order. Once you know how light bounces, bending and focusing both make more sense, and so do the optical devices you’ll build later.
✅ Self-Check Before You Roll On
Check off each item as you get there. These are not grades — they are your own signal.