Measuring the Focal Length of a Diverging Lens

It is easy to measure the focal length of a converging lens. You let light from a distant object
pass through the lens and then move a screen back and forth until a clear image forms.
Because the light from the distant object in nearly parallel, the image is formed at the focal
point. All you do is measure he distance from the lens to the screen.

The diverging lens presents difficulties because its image is virtual and so you cannot point
to a place in space where the image is to be found. You don’t know where to put your ruler.
So, we have to measure the focal length of a diverging lens by observing its effect on
something that we can measure. In this case we will see how it shifts the position of a real
image formed by a converging lens.

I can think of two ways to approach this. What starts just below is the first thing I thought
of. It is noticeably longer though. If you don’t care for this analysis, go down a couple of
pages to the next note in red and try that one.

Begin with a converging lens that has a focal length of, say, 25cm and let parallel light pass
through it. The result is no surprise.

focal point

fc = 25cm

Now put a diverging lens in between the converging lens and this image. Let’s suppose the
focal length of the diverging lens is -50cm and that we put it 10cm to the right of the
converging lens. Qualitatively it should make the rays drawn in red diverge from their
current paths. But the question is how much? Will the diverging lens prevent the red rays
from crossing at all? If the diverging lens is weak the answer should be no. If the diverging
lens is strong the answer might be yes.

If I just put in the diverging lens I will have a problem.

 converging diverging
lens lens

focal point fd = -50cm

fc = 25cm

No rays like
this.

Because the only rays I know how to draw come in parallel to the optical axis and the only
ray that does so is the one that goes through the center of the lens, I cannot find the
crossing point for even two rays. Am I stuck? Never! Let’s just use the thin lens formula
and see how that works.

The image from the first lens is 15cm on the right side of the diverging lens. That means,
with it as the object, the object distance for lens #2 is -15cm. Where is the final image?

1 1 1
 
50cm 15cm i
1 1 1
 
50cm 15cm i
3  10 1

150cm i
21.4 cm  i

Now I can draw what happens in the ray diagram but only because I already know where the
rays come together to form the image.
 converging diverging
lens lens

focal point fd = -50cm

fc = 25cm

The image has shifted off to the right. Can I work this backwards to find the focal length of
the diverging lens given the other information?

 fc is the focal length of the converging lens.

 D is the distance between the lenses.
 id is the distance from the diverging lens to the observed image.
 I want to find fd which is the focal length of the diverging lens.

I will write down the thin lens formula for the diverging lens where the object distance will
be the difference between D and fc. This is just what I did up above. I will choose to place
the diverging lens in between the converging lens and its focal point. This will make the
object distance for the diverging lens negative.

1 1 1
 
fd D  fc i
1 i D  fc
 
fd  D  fc  i   D  f c  i 

fd 
D  fc i 
i  D  fc

Try this out. Suppose that you have a 40cm converging lens and that you put a diverging
lens with unknown focal length 10cm behind it. You let light from a brightly illuminated
tree from across the street shine through the pair of lenses and you find the image of the tree
50cm behind the diverging lens. What is the focal length of the diverging lens?
 fd 
D  fc i 
i  D  fc

10cm  40cm  50cm 


50cm  10cm  40cm
 75cm
________________________________________________________________________

You could also think of putting the diverging lens in front of the converging lens. The
effect of this is to shift the object distance. How does this work? Go back to the first
drawing.

focal point of
converging lens

This object is at an infinite distance. If I put the diverging lens a distance L to the left of the
converging lens it will spread out the light so that it looks as if it were coming from the left
focal point of the diverging lens.

focal point of
L
diverging lens
focal point of
converging lens

New image
location

diverging lens
Just use the thin lens formula with an object distance of L + (- fd ). I put a negative sign in
here because the focal length of a diverging lens is a negative number and I am trying to add
two positive distances.

To get a real image this object distance must be larger than the focal length of the
converging lens1.

1 1 1
 
fc L  fd i

1 1 1
 
fc i L  fd

i  fc 1

i  fc L  fd

i  fc
 L  fd
i  fc

i  fc
fd  L 
i  fc

Suppose that I have the 40cm converging lens from before and I put the diverging lens
10cm in front of it. Now suppose that the image is 50cm behind the converging lens. What
is the focal length of the diverging lens?

i  fc
fd  L 
i  fc

 50cm  40cm 
 10cm 
50cm  40cm
 10cm

1 One way you could be sure of this is to put the diverging lens on the focal point of the converging lens; make
 f c2
L = fc. The expression for the focal length of the diverging lens would then be fd 
i  fc