• Question: What makes glass magnify what you can see

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      Asked by JJD to Martin, Elizabeth on 16 Mar 2015.
      • Photo: Martin Ward

        Martin Ward answered on 16 Mar 2015:

        If the glass is flat and smooth, it will not magnify what you see – in fact you wouldn’t even notice the glass was there! To make the glass magnify the surface has to be curved and this would give us a lens (like the pieces of glass in spectacles). When the glass is curved it collects lots of light at a certain position behind it, this is what makes things look bigger to us when we look through them

      • Photo: Elizabeth Cooper

        Elizabeth Cooper answered on 19 Mar 2015:

        The glass is curved. So all the lens does then is bend the light beams to make the what you can see the glass larger.

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