What will happen if the aperture of the spherical mirror is greater than the radius of the curvature of the spherical mirror?
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Solution
Spherical mirror:
A spherical mirror is one with a reflecting surface that is part of a hollow glass sphere. There are two kinds of spherical mirrors: Concave mirrors and convex mirrors.
Explanation:
The diameter of the aperture of such a spherical mirror cannot be greater than twice the radius of curvature. A mirror of this type would have substantial spherical aberration. A big aperture mirror that could still concentrate parallel incident light onto a point must have a parabolic form; any such lens has no length restriction.
A severe aberration would exist in such a mirror whereby not all incident light would focus in an identical location unless it came from the center of curvature. In order to create a lens with no theoretical size limit, an enormous aperture mirror that will concentrate parallel incident light to a degree has to have a parabolic form.
Parallel light beams are not focused to a single focal point by spherical mirrors. The purpose of choosing an aperture that is significantly smaller than the mirror's radius is to confine entering light to an area wherein rays do arrive toward a single focus point.
