Question

Does a concave lens make things bigger or smaller?

Answer 1

Hint:The word lens comes from the word ‘lēns’, which is the Latin name for the word ‘lentil’ because double-convex lenses are lentil-shaped. Lenses are magnifying glasses with curved sides. It is the pattern of the curves which decides the angles at which light beams will be bent when incident on them. A lens in simple words is a piece of transparent glass that concentrates or disperses light rays when it passes through them by the phenomenon known as refraction. Due to this property of the lenses, they are utilized in telescopes and many other magnifying devices.

Complete step by step solution:
A concave lens is one that distorts an upright, decreased virtual picture from a straight light beam. Both actual and virtual images can be created using it. At least one internal surface of concave lenses is curved. Since it is rounded at the center and bulges outward at the borders, a concave lens is also known as a diverging lens because it causes the light to diverge.

Since they make distant objects appear smaller than they actually are, they are used to cure myopia. A concave lens has a cave-like form in the middle, narrower in the middle, and broader at the edges. Because of its shape, the concave lens diverges or bends the refracted rays outward. To create the image, these rays never collide. As a result, the produced images are little and imaginary. Simply said, a concave lens makes things appear closer and smaller. Nearsightedness is corrected using concave lenses.

Hence, we can say that a concave lens makes a smaller image.

Note: The word magnifying glasses used in the hint section does not necessarily always refer to the property of enlargement of images formed by the lens. In fact, the term magnification in Physics can be used to describe any sort of changes in the size of the image formed. As a matter of fact, magnification can be represented by the use of both a positive or a negative sign to represent enlargement or reduction in the size of images respectively.