How does a plane mirror form an image of an object?

[harivarshan]

how image is formed on a plane mirror , when light bulb is switched on, photon strikes a point on an object ( for ex.a ball) and from their the photon strikes the mirror and form incident angle and reflective angle , my question is does the photon carry the image with it ? or does it act like a camera ?

 

[jedishrfu]

Two possibilities exist when the photon strikes the object:

1) it is absorbed
2) it is reflected

So a RED object will absorb all visible light except RED. The RED photon will be reflected off the object and will strike the mirror and be reflected into your eyecausing you to see a RED spot on the object. Other parts of the object are illuminated in a similar way. The photon carries a pixel of the image but not the whole image.

 

[harivarshan]

thanks for reply , i have a doubt , why mirror reflects all coloured photons?, doesn't mirror absorb some specific coloured protons ?

 

[jedishrfu]

You can answer your own questions just by reading a little on wikipedia for example:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mirror

Mirrors reflect photons in general but every material will absorb some specific frequencies.

 

[CWatters]

my question is does the photon carry the image with it ? or does it act like a camera ?

The photons do contain all the information about the object but you need something like the eye of an observer to put it all together. Some properties like the colour of the object are conveyed differently to properties such as shape and position. The human eye and brain interprets the frequency of the photon as colour. Shape and position information is conveyed in the direction from which the photons arrive at the eye.

http://physics.nayland.school.nz/VisualPhysics/NZ-physics%20HTML/10_Light/chapter10k.html