What Is Reflection?

[ LiB ]

What Is Reflection?

When the electromagnetic wave of light interacts with a material, it is either emitted from the material or absorbed into the material as heat. Because light travels in straight lines it normally takes the most guaranteed path and uses the shortest distance to travel. When light hits a white sheet of paper, the paper appears white because of the material's properties. The electrons in the white paper emit light the same way it is entered with very little energy being turned into heat. The energy that's emitted from the material and returned into space is called reflective energy . It's important to think of light in the ray form of movement from now on. In order to understand reflection you must understand the fundamentals of incoming and reflected energy. The angles for the incoming and reflected light are broken down into two terms.

The angle in which the ray is incoming is normally the angle in which the ray leaves the material. The angle is typically a factor of the material's impurities. Let's look at an example in Figure 3.4.

Figure 3.4. Angle of incidence.

When the ray hits the material, its direction from the light source to the surface will change. The incoming line (light source to surface) is therefore often called the incident ray and the outgoing line (surface to wherever) is often called the reflected ray . See Figure 3.5.

Figure 3.5. An example of the incident and reflected ray relationship.

[ LiB ]