Phantom bouquet: Real image from a concave mirror.

Phantom bouquet: Real image from a concave mirror. If an object is placed just below the center of curvature of a concave mirror, a real inverted image is formed just above the center of curvature. This is the secret to the 'phantom bouquet' demo. Artificial flowers are suspended upside-down in a box so that they are concealed to the viewer yet open to the mirror. A real rightside-up image of the flowers appears to be planted in the pot. The image appears solid and real,-yet a hand can pass through it. Figure 1 shows the ray diagram for the setup. The inverted flowers are the object at 'o', and the real image of the flowers are at 'i'. A lamp is used to illuminate the flowers, making the image much brighter. In setting up this demo, the distance from the flowers to the mirror must be quite accurate to make the illusion seem real.