Final answer:
A camera can enhance our vision with technologies like zooming and microscopes, and lasers differ from other light sources by emitting coherent, monochromatic light due to stimulated emission. Virtual images can be seen and photographed but not directly projected, while real images can be projected onto a screen.
Step-by-step explanation:
A camera can help someone see things they wouldn't normally be able to see by using various technological advancements such as zoom lenses, slow-motion capture, and microscopes which enhance our visual capability. This technology allows us to see things that are too small, too far away, or events that happen too quickly for our eyes alone.
A laser is different from light produced by other sources because it emits coherent and monochromatic light. Lasers produce light that is all in phase, meaning the peaks and troughs of the light waves are aligned, and it is of a single wavelength, which gives laser light its distinctive precise beam. This coherence is a result of a process called stimulated emission within a laser chamber, where an external source of energy prompts electrons in laser material to jump to a metastable state. As they return to a lower energy state, they release photons in-phase, creating a coherent light.
To answer your specific questions:
- Virtual images are not directly projectable onto a screen because they are formed by light rays that appear to diverge from a point behind the lens or mirror. You can see a virtual image because your eye re-converges the light rays to form a picture on the retina.
- It is possible to photograph a virtual image with a camera if the camera lens is placed where the eye would be to view the image.
- Real images