Bob Blakely <Bob@Blakely.com> writes: > Whoa there! You're right! Damn, I had another brain fart! What I've been > calling a virtual image is a form of real image, even though it can only be > seen through the eyepiece and exists only in the ether! Now there was a name > for this type of real image. What was it? I can see the diagrams from the > text in my head, but I can't make out the term! Er, um, no, it seems to me you've been denying that it is any sort of image at all. As in the usage of "real number" in maths (a rich source of pomo nonsense, btw), "real image" has a conventional meaning, that doesn't deny the "reality" of virtual images. I think most simply that a *real image* is one to which the light rays are all converging (so it forms on a sheet of paper); otoh, a *virtual image* is one from which the light rays are *diverging*. So if you catch these diverging rays in your imaging system (eye), you see the image. When you hold a magnifying glass just above the newspaper, it forms an image you can most certainly see, that is just below the actual surface of the newspaper. So it would be astonishing if it you could capture this image by placing some film underneath the newspaper! Brian Chandler ---------------- geo://Sano.Japan.Planet_3 http://imaginatorium.org/
