The Phantom Bouquet is a venerable lecture demonstration that does a fine job of showing how a concave spherical mirror can form a real, inverted image. In the original demonstration, a brightly illuminated artificial rose is hung by its stem in front of a concave spherical mirror. The distance from the reflecting surface to the rose is somewhat more than the focal length of the mirror (which is twice the radius of curvature). The re-inverted real image of the rose seems to be suspended in space, but to complete the illusion, a vase filled with water is placed at the same plane as the image, and the rose appears to be placed in the vase. I set this up at the end of the lecture bench for the students to see as they came into the classroom.

Topics
Television broadcasting, Gas jet, Educational aids, Educational assessment, Libraries, Lectures
1.
R. Austin
 
Freeman
, “The Apparition of Burling Court,” in
The Famous Cases of Dr. Thorndyke
(
Hodder & Stoughton
,
London
,
1929
), pp.
818
–
852
.
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© 2019 American Association of Physics Teachers.
2019
American Association of Physics Teachers
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