GCSE Physics


All waves will reflect off different surfaces. This means that instead of just passing into another medium, the waves bounce back.

You should be familiar with the idea of light reflecting off a flat (plane) mirror:

reflection of light off a mirror

The incoming ray of light is called the incident ray. We measure the angle it makes not to the mirror, but to an imaginary line at 90° to its surface: the normal.

The law of reflection states:
angle of incidence = angle of reflection
i = r

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