virtual image
- noun
- /ˈvɜrʧuəl ˈɪmɪdʒ/
- Specialized
:
imagen virtual
- When you look into the concave mirror, the virtual image created seems to float in front of the mirror's surface.
Examples
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So in these ones, we've learned that these generate these weird non intuitive virtual images, right?
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You could take away the combination of the object and the magnifier and replace it with a virtual image that this system formed.
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And if you join them, you get an image here that is the virtual image in the sense that this is a concave mirror A.
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It is the virtual image that corresponds to such and such actual image, instead of actualizing itself, to have to actualize itself in "another" actual image.
Academic text (2004) -
Snow sets this "exchange between an actual image and a virtual image; the virtual becomes actual and conversely; and also there is exchange between the limpid and the opaque, the opaque becoming limpid and conversely; finally, there is exchange between a seed and a context.
Academic text (2004) -
The virtual image in the plane mirror appears to be behind the glass, but it cannot be captured on a screen.
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In our optics experiment, we observed how the virtual image formed by the lens could not be projected onto a wall.
Surface Forms
Morphology
The phrase is directly compositional: 'virtual' (not physically real / existing in a simulation) modifies 'image' (a picture), yielding an image that exists in or is produced by a virtual environment. This adjective+noun pattern is a regular, cross-linguistically common combination, so a B1 learner who knows both constituents can reliably infer the meaning.
Etymology
The noun virtual image comes from looking in a mirror: the image looks as if it is behind the glass, but the light does not actually come from that place, so you cannot catch it on a screen. That's why virtual image means 'an image you can see but cannot project'.
