Solution

ID: past-exam-of-the-physics-2-paper-of-the-university-of-oxford/2016/10/c/solution

A real image is a point where the actual outgoing rays converge; a screen placed there can intercept the focused light. A virtual image is a point from which the outgoing rays appear to diverge: only their backward extensions intersect, so a screen at that apparent point does not receive a focused real image from the same rays.
For a converging thin lens with and a real object a distance away, the lens relation gives . If , then : the image is real, on the opposite side, and inverted. If , then : the image is virtual, on the same side as the object, upright and enlarged, with .
At , the emergent rays are parallel and the image is at infinity; there is no finite focused image. For an object very far away, from above. These are conditions for a real object in the stated lens convention, rather than claims about all systems with virtual incident objects.

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