Discussion on Carbon & its Compounds

Light rays change direction when they reflect off a surface, move from one transparent medium into another, or travel through a medium whose composition is continuously changing. The law of reflection states that, on reflection from a smooth surface, the angle of the reflected ray is equal to the angle of the incident ray. (By convention, all angles in geometrical optics are measured with respect to the normal to the surface—that is, to a line perpendicular to the surface, as shown in the For a smooth surface the angle of incidence (θ1) equals the angle of reflection … The reflected ray is always in the plane defined by the incident ray ..