Q10.13 You have learnt in the text how Huygens’ principle leads to the laws of reflection and refraction. Use the same principle to deduce directly that a point object placed in front of a plane mirror produces a virtual image whose distance from the mirror is equal to the object distance from the mirror.
Let an object M is placed in front of a plane mirror AB at a distance r .
A circle is drawn from the centre, such that it just touches the plane mirror at point P. according to the Huygens’ principle, AB is the wavefront of the incident light .
If the mirror is absent then a similar wavefront A'B' would form behind M at a distance r.
A'B' can be considered as a virtual reflected ray for the plane mirror. Hence a point object placed in front of the plane mirror produces an image at the same distance as the object.