Eyes are the most beautiful tool of nature to let you see the beauty and colors of the picturesque world. We know that our eyes are very fragile, more fragile than most parts of our bodies. But there are more secrets about these blessings than we know. Here are some of the facts about your precious eyes that you didn’t know:
1. They work 24/7
Out of all the muscles in your body, the muscles that control your eyes are the most active ones. The average blink of an eye lasts for about 1/10th of a second. Seeing is such a big part of everyday life that it requires about half of the brain to get involved. You blink about 12 times every minute which helps to keep the moisture of your beautiful eyes intact and let you see the marvelous to its best.
2. Your eyes are really fast
Under optimal conditions, the eye is able to see and perceive up to 25 frames per second or process the same image 25 times in a second. The peak angular speed of the eye during a saccade reaches up to 900°/s in humans. Also, your eyes heal quickly. With proper care, it only takes about 48 hours for the eye to repair a corneal scratch. In case of an injury in the eye, you could very easily develop severe infections that could even make you go blind.
3. They are very vast as well
The cells in your eye come in different shapes. Rod-shaped cells allow you to see shapes, and cone-shaped cells allow you to see color. The “visual centers” in your brain are actually located at the lower back part of your head. The major parts of your eye comprise of the cornea and the lens, the retina and the optic nerve, all serving their purposes days in and out.
4. We all have a blind spot
Scotoma, generally known as the blind spot, is an obscuration of the visual field. It results into a disappearance of an image at a particular distance, angle and position. Since there are no cells to detect light on the optic disc, a part of the field of vision is not perceived. The brain interpolates the blind spot based on surrounding detail and information from the other eye, so the blind spot is not normally perceived.
5. Eye floaters are…
Floaters are small pieces of debris that float in the eye’s vitreous humour. The debris casts shadows on to the retina (the light-sensitive tissue lining the back of the eye). One person’s eye floater is not always the same as another person’s eye floater. For people over age 55, eye floaters are often caused by posterior vitreous detachments, which is when the retina and the vitreous membrane separate. But eye floaters can also be pigment, or blood, or inflammation. In most cases, they do not cause major problems and do not require treatment. Eye drops or similar types of medication will not make floaters disappear.
6. Even your eyes can get sunburned
Just like you get sunburns on your skin, similarly, the rays of the sun can, and in fact are bound to damage the tissues of the eyes. The eyes are very sensitive to sunlight. Sunburns in your eyes can cause damage to the light-sensitive membrane that covers the inside of the eyeball (retina) or damage to the lens (which can eventually cause cataracts).The lens in our eye focuses the sun’s rays on to the retina, burning a spot in the retina that causes permanent vision loss.
7. Your age affects your eyes more than you know
Not just in terms of weakness and other harms, but your age affects your eyes’ colour as well. Everyone is born with eyes that are at least slightly lighter than they are now. Pigmentation of our irises isn’t fully developed at birth. It occurs in the first year of life, which means our eyes are darker now than they were when we were newborns. Most babies who have European ancestry have light-colored eyes before the age of one. As the child develops, melanocytes slowly begin to produce melanin. Because melanocyte cells continually produce pigment, in theory eye color can be changed.
8. The different shades
Eye color is a character determined by two distinct factors that are the pigmentation of the eye’s iris and the frequency-dependence of the scattering of light by the turbid medium in the stroma of the iris. Some people have lighter eyes and other people have darker eyes thanks to cells called melanocytes, which are also responsible for providing color to your skin, color your irises too. Some people are born with two differently colored eyes. This condition is heterochromia.
9. The better you see
The length of your eye helps determine what kind of eyesight you have. Your eyes are about 1 inch across and weigh about 0.25 ounce. In addition to the eyes’ lens and corneal function, the length of your eyeball has a lot to do with whether you’re nearsighted or farsighted. People who are nearsighted have a longer-than-normal eyeball, while people who are farsighted have a shorter-than-normal eyeball. Just a millimeter change in the length of the eye will change the prescription for that eye.
10. Your eyeballs enlarge with age
When a child is born, the eyeballs are each 16 millimeters wide. By the time you turn three years of age, they will grow to each be 23 millimeters wide. Your eyeballs will reach their maximum size when you hit puberty- around 24 millimeters wide. And that stays for the rest of your life.
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