Plano-Convex Lens

What is a Plano-Convex Lens?

To understand the topic well we will first break down the name of the topic, ‘Plano Convex lens’ into three separate words and look at them individually.

Lens: Lens is just a piece of transparent material, generally glass, which has at least one curved surface. It is a transmissive optical device used for either concentrating the lay rays on one point or for dispersing the light rays. Lens function based on the principle of refraction. There are six different types of lenses. Each type of lens has two focal points Unlike mirrors, at least one surface of a lens must be curved if not both

Convex: Convex lens, also known as a converging lens, is used to bend the parallel light ray incident on it so that they converge at a spot beyond the lens. This spot is termed the focal point. These are most commonly used in eyeglasses to correct farsightedness.

Plano: Plano has a dictionary meaning of a flat level.

Now if we combine these three individual word’s definitions, we can obtain our definition for plano convex lens which is as follows –

A plano convex lens has a structure wherein one side of the lens is curved outwards and the other side is plane.  It is used to converge parallel light rights onto one point which is the positive focal point.

In this process, it forms real images that can be manipulated by the use of spatial filters.

The structure is such that it is an asymmetrical lens. This feature of a plano convex lens helps reduce the spherical aberration in instances where the object and the image are no at equal distances from the lens.