How It Works
The incoming ray is reflected three times, once by each surface, which results in a reversal of direction. To see this, the three corresponding normal vectors of the corner's perpendicular sides can be considered to form a basis (a rectangular coordinate system) (x, y, z) in which to represent the direction of an arbitrary incoming ray, . When the ray reflects from the first side, say x, the ray's x component, a, is reversed to -a while the y and z components are unchanged, resulting in a direction of . Similarly, when reflected from side y and finally from side z, the b and c components are reversed. So the ray direction goes from to to to and it leaves the corner reflector with all three components of direction exactly reversed.
Read more about this topic: Corner Reflector
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