Solution

ID: past-exam-of-the-physics-course-of-the-year-1-of-the-natural-sciences-course-of-the-university-of-cambridge/2022/section-a/4/solution

Take the thin lens at , with the object on the left and light rays travelling to the right. The positive object distance is and the focal length is . The thin lens equation gives
The transverse magnification and signed image height are
Thus the real image is beyond the lens, inverted and high. For the ray tracing, a light ray parallel to the optical axis emerges through the far optical focus; a light ray through the optical centre continues straight in the ideal thin lens model. They intersect at , independently reading off both answers from the diagram.
Figure 1.
Ray tracing for the converging thin lens: object and image heights and both focal points
. Details.
The calculation and diagram use the ideal paraxial approximation implicit in the thin lens equation. The comparatively large object height does not supply enough information to calculate optical aberrations of a real lens.

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