What is Convex Mirror?

A spherical mirror is a mirror that has the shape of a piece cut out of a spherical surface. There are two types of spherical mirrors: concave and convex mirrors. In this article, we will be studying the convex mirror and the type of images formed by it in detail.

Convex Mirror is a curved mirror where the reflective surface bulges out toward the light source. This bulging-out surface reflects light outwards and is not used to focus light. These mirrors form a virtual image as the focal point (F), and the centre of curvature (2F) are imaginary points in the mirror that cannot be reached. This results in the formation of images that cannot be projected on a screen as the image is inside the mirror. The image looks smaller than the object from a distance but gets larger as the object gets closer to the mirror.

In this diagram, the centre of the original sphere is called the centre of the curvature (C) and the line that passes from the mirror’s surface through the sphere’s centre is called the principal axis. The mirror contains a focal point (F), located along the principal axis, which is the midway between the centre of curvature and the mirror’s surface. Both the centre of curvature and the focal point is located on the side of the mirror opposite the object. As the focal point is located behind the convex mirror, a mirror is said to have a negative focal length value.