Why is my reflected trajectory not the expected direction of [0,0,-1]?

[Xyius]

I am writing a simulation in MATLAB of particles that perfectly reflect off of a surface. However, my question is physics based, not code based.

So here is my issue. A particle is traveling towards a flat plane in space at z=1 with a velocity vector of [0,0,1]. The normal vector of the surface is [0,0,-1].

I want to calculate the reflected trajectory of the particle so I use the following expression.

[tex]|\vec{v}|\left[2(\hat{n} \cdot \hat{v})\hat{n}-\hat{v}\right][/tex]

The problem is, in my head, the reflected trajectory should clearly be [0,0,-1] However, when I calculate it, I get [0,0,1]. Why is this happening? Is my equation right?

EDIT:

I know the normal vector of the surface is correct, as the front of the plane is facing the particle source.

Also, I need to use the general expression for a reflection as I will be moving onto any 3D object as the next step.

 

[SredniVashtar]

Draw the vectors and their versors for a generic incident beam, let's say at 30° wrt the surface.
Then draw the projection of versor v on the direction of n, and its double.
Then sum it to the negative versor of v using the parallelogram rule.
You have to use a ruler to have the proportions right.

It appears that the result is opposite to the reflected beam. Do you agree?

 

[Khashishi]

I'm not sure where you got the equation from. Break up your initial velocity vector into a lateral component and a normal component. Reverse the normal component, and add it back to the lateral component. It should work regardless of the direction of the normal.

 

[Xyius]

SredniVashtar

It seems like I get the opposite of what I should get. But I already got this result using the simpler case of a vector normal to the plane.

Khashishi

I remember in many of my electromagnetics courses, there was a general expression for the reflection of a vector. I looked on the internet to try and find it and got this..

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reflection_(mathematics)

Scroll down to "Reflection across a line in the plane"

The result of the equation doesn't seem to match my intuition.

EDIT:

I will look into using MATLAB functions to project the normal then subtract as another way of doing this without the equation.

 

[Khashishi]

Try manually deriving the reflection by breaking it up into components. Maybe the wiki is wrong (I didn't check).

 

[Xyius]

So everything points to there being a negative sign that is wrong. I swapped the negative sign and it works in one scenario in my code, but not another. I will determine if this problem is really solved or if something is weird in my code and report back!