What Is Light And How Is It Focused?

Light waves are pretty cool! (well to me at least). But light waves can get a little complex. Fortunately, you don’t need to learn much about light waves in order to enjoy them. You can get great vision without ever thinking about how that vision gets focused into the eye. But let’s talk about it anyway, since learning new things is always fun.

Light is a wave of energy. These waves are similar to what you would surf on at the ocean, and have peaks and troughs. Like how ocean waves flow to the shore, light waves travel in one direction as well. The distance between each peak of the wave determines whether or not we can see this light (visible light wave), whether it provides us the latest top hits (radio wave) or allows us to reheat last night’s dinner (microwave).

If nothing is in its way then light waves continue in a straight line. But if the light encounters something transparent in front of it (such as glass), the light will “slow down” as it passes through. But because light can’t actually slow down (it travels at the speed of light), the light wave is bent instead.

Seeing that glass objects can bend light, smart people long ago figured out that you can create a lens to control how that light is bent. And when created properly, you can bend all the light to focus on a single point. This where the eye comes in to play. They eye actually has it’s own lenses built into it. And these lenses are capable of bending the light around us onto our retina. This is what gives us vision! What a cool system.

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