Try it on paper first. A hint, the key idea and the worked solution are here when you need them.
A student has a mirror in a box. She cannot see its surface, but she can move a small lamp in front of it and look at the image. When the lamp is from the mirror, she sees an upright image three times as tall as the lamp. Use the New Cartesian sign convention to find the image distance, the focal length and the radius of curvature, and say what kind of mirror it is. Then find where the lamp must go to give a real image of the same size as the lamp.
For a spherical mirror in the New Cartesian convention, with , and the magnification is . A real object has . A concave mirror has , and a convex mirror has . A positive means a virtual image behind the mirror.
Have you tried it?
Work it out on paper first. It is fine to get stuck or make a mistake: that is how we learn. When you are ready, go through the solution one step at a time, and check each step against your own.
Given. and .
Plan. The magnification gives . The mirror formula then gives .
Step 1. The image distance. , so . A positive means a virtual image behind the mirror.
Step 2. The focal length. We want , so . So .
Step 3. The radius and the kind. . A negative focal length means a concave mirror. This agrees with the enlarged, upright image, which only a concave mirror gives for an object inside the focus.
Step 4. The same size, real. We need , which means . Then , so . The lamp must be at the centre of curvature.
Answer: , , , a concave mirror, and the lamp at in front of it.
Watch out. The lamp at is inside the focal length of . At the image would be real and upside down, with .
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