Spherical and parabolic mirrors

We've learnt about the concave and convex mirrors. Now, let's study spherical and parabolic mirrors.




Parabolic mirror

First, look at this parabolic mirror.

The reason why this is called a parabolic mirror is because its in a shape of a parabola. But to build this parabolic shape is hard, that's why we have another type of mirror -- spherical mirror.




Spherical mirror

A spherical mirror is built from a small part of a sphere as you can see, but if we take a large part of a sphere, we would not be able to make a spherical mirror which could focusing light. It's much cheaper and easier to be built than a parabolic mirror, but its ability of focusing light is weaker than a parabolic mirror.



And there's one important thing to remember, there are both concave, convex parabolic mirrors, and concave, convex spherical mirrors.

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