PART I - The Thin Lens Equation
• Move the object so that the eraser is on the optical axis.
• From the green control box, select Many Rays.
The Many Rays setting allows you to see a depiction of light being diffusively scattered from the point of the pencil. Several of these scattered rays intersect the lens. Because the lens is curved, each ray encounters the surface of the lens at a slightly different angel. Snell's Law tells us that each light ray is going to be bent at a slightly different angle. Here is where it gets interesting. The bent rays intersect each other at a location called the focal point of the lens.
The relationship between the object distance (p), the image distance (q), and the focal length (f) is captured by the thin lens equation
• Select the ruler from the green control panel.
• Choose any Radius of Curvature other than the default 0.8 m.
• Move the object to any position on the optical axis outside the focal length (e.g., beyond the "x"),
• Measure the image and object distances.
• Repeat 5 times.
In your laboratory notebook, create a table that contains the focal length, object distance, and measured image distance. In two additional columns, include the image distance calculated from the thin lens equations above and the difference between the two image distances. Also write a short paragraph describing whether or not your data and analysis supports or fails to support the thin lens equation.