How Do Glasses Work?

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Ever wonder how placing two mysterious transparent lenses in front of your eyes changes the world around you? Read to find out

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One of the most basic yet widely misunderstood concepts I encounter on a daily basis is, how exactly do glasses improve your vision? One moment you feel as if you are blind as a bat, yet the next, once you slip your second pair of eyes on, the world around you jumps to life. Many patients refer to the “medication” in their lenses (in a way, however, they’re right). Some seem to believe as if their glasses are magic, for they must provide perfect vision at all ranges no matter what vision-modifying disease may be present. Most just don’t ever put much thought into it, for as long as they can slide them on and continue to function in the world, they are happy.

If you haven’t read our other article, titled “Why Do I Need Glasses”, I advise you to stop now and read that first.

Think back to your childhood. If you were ever as utterly sadistic as myself, you might have tried to use a magnifying glass in the hot playground sun to play God by burning one of the many lowly citizens of Antopolis.

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"Let me see your war face!"

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Now read carefully, because this is an example to help visualize the process. I don’t want any of you readers to go running outside with magnifying glass in hand to stare at the sun. Please don’t do that.

The clear part of the magnifying glass is called the lens. Lenses bend and focus light. In the case of The Great Ant Massacre, our child God is using the intense light from the sun and focusing it on an ant. Even further, you can actually control where the lens focuses its light by designing lenses with different curves. This is the core concept behind how glasses work. The prescription of your glasses describes the power of your lenses, among other things, and lower powers bend light less, while higher powers bend light more.

Because you’ve read up on why you need glasses in the first place, you understand that poor vision, in the absence of other disease, is mainly due to the length of your eyeball. If you can design a lens to bend light so that it lands exactly where it needs to for the very specific length of your eyeball, then you can create a pair of glasses. Voila!

#Glasses