The Obedient Reflected Ray
Initializing live version

Requires a Wolfram Notebook System
Interact on desktop, mobile and cloud with the free Wolfram Player or other Wolfram Language products.
Two mirrors are joined at a fixed angle at . A ray of light shines into the angle between them, parallel to the horizontal mirror and at a given height. It bounces a number of times. Suppose it strikes the lower mirror at right angles at
and then reemerges along the original path. This is called an obedient ray.
Contributed by: Izidor Hafner (December 2015)
Open content licensed under CC BY-NC-SA
Snapshots
Details
They are equal.
Reference
[1] D. Wells, The Penguin Book of Curious and Interesting Puzzles, New York: Penguin Books, 1992.
Permanent Citation