Sunday, 4 September 2016

homework and exercises - Image formation (lenses)



I have a question regarding image formation by lenses. It is the following:



A lense with a focal length of $-48.0cm$ forms an image $17.0cm$ to the right of the lense. Where is the object positioned?


My attempt at a solution:


Well, since the focal length is negative, we know that the lense is divergent (concave). The problem statement says that the image is to the right of the lense, so $s_i=17cm (>0)$


We can compute the position of the object by using the formula below:


$$\dfrac{1}{d_0}+\dfrac{1}{d_i}=\dfrac{1}{f}$$


Changing what we know for the values, we get:


$$\dfrac{1}{d_0}+\dfrac{1}{17}=- \dfrac{1}{48}$$


And doing the calculations, it comes down to:


$$s_0=-12.55$$


However, the solutions say the solution is $s_0=26.3$. One can get that if we take $s_i$ to be negative, which is wrong, in my opinion. (?)



So, why am I wrong? Or am I correct?




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