Review for:Image formation by a converging lens

posted: on February 19, 2007 at 3:07PM

Physics

Lenses

The students had to be able to draw ray diagrams representing image formation by converging lenses.

Intro or Regular

This web resource was given to the students after they completed an actual lab on image formation by converging lenses. During the lab, the students explored visually how the images were formed but they did not nave to draw ray diagrams. When working with the web site, the students could see how light rays reflected from an object were refracted by a lens and how the image of the object was formed on a ray diagram. They could drag an arrow that represented an object to different locations with respect to a lens' focus. They could see how the image size, location, and orientation changed as the object's location changed.

Provides visualization or animation, Provides a virtual lab, Increases student engagement and motivation

This web resource includes a very simple and representative simulation that covers the major ways of image foramtion by converging lenses.

I did not find the text accompanying the simulator to be appropriate to my students' level, which was mostly conceptual and did not include the mathematical description of image formation given in the text.