Question

Explain the use of concave mirror as solar concentrators with the help of a ray diagram.

Answer 1

A solar concentrator uses lenses, called Fresnel lenses, which take a large area of sunlight and direct it towards a specific spot by bending the rays of light and focusing them.

Similarly in concave mirror all light ray passing parallel to principal axis converge on a single point called focus of the mirror.

Hence when concave mirrors are used as solar concentrators, the concave mirror is placed such that the sun rays are parallel to the principal axis and they all converge at a single point, and the substance to be heated is placed at this point.