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's distance from the mirror.
Let an object M be 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 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.