• Question: How do the eyes enable us to see?

    Asked by sciencetube145 to Gioia, Iain, Jo, Leo, Mariam on 16 Jun 2010 in Categories: .
    • Photo: Iain Moal

      Iain Moal answered on 16 Jun 2010:

      Well, the light hits the lens of the eye and is focussed onto the retina. When the photons of the light hit the retina, they cause a molecule there to change shape. That shape change is picked up by the eye, and it sends an electrical signal along the optic nerve all the way to the brain.

    • Photo: Joanna Watson

      Joanna Watson answered on 16 Jun 2010:

      There are lots of nerve cells in the back of the eyes called photoreceptors. When light hits the nerve cells they send signals to our brains about the light, and our brains use the signals from all the receptors to create what we see.

    • Photo: Leo Garcia

      Leo Garcia answered on 16 Jun 2010:

      The eye works by converting electromagnetic radiation, in a particular narrow range of frequencies that we call ‘visible light’, from the world around us into electrical impulses that the brain can understand. The brain then builds up a picture in our minds from those electrical impulses – which is what we ‘see’! Pretty cool, huh? Brains are very cool.

      So, without the brain, the eyes aren’t worth much! Think of an eye like a kind of amazing, moist, biological digital camera.

    • Photo: Mariam Orme

      Mariam Orme answered on 16 Jun 2010:

      A very basic explanation:

      At the back of your eye are nerve cells (called rods and cones) that sense light. When they sense light, they send signals into your brain, which interprets the signals to give you an image of what’s in front of you. So without a brain, eyes would be useless!

      I’m afraid I don’t know enough about it to give you much more detail than that, but if you want to know more, it might be worth looking at this website: http://www.howstuffworks.com/eye.htm

Comments