I spent a good 12 hours yesterday in front of my laptop monitor. I didn't plan to go that long, but hey, life happens, and things need to get done. The upside: I got a ton of things done. The downside: my eyes were seriously strained at the end of the day.
When I went to bed last night, still feeling the burn, so to speak, I got to thinking about how much we take our peepers for granted. I mean, how much do we really know about them, apart from the fact we use them to see and they come in a variety of cool colors? And so today, I scoured the web to compile a list of pretty fascinating eye trivia. Let's get our learn on!
Our eyes have two million working parts, seven million cones which help us see colour and detail, plus 100 million cells (a.k.a. rods) that provide our night vision.
The average blink lasts for about 1/10th of a second.
A key reason eyes become tired at the computer: we blink less often. (Lesson learned.) And yes, sometimes a good nap can help.
80% of all human memories are determined by what we see.
Eyes are the body's second most complex organ after the brain.
One reason we may never make it to Mars: long-term space travel can wreaking havoc on astronoauts' eyes.
Eye color is determined by the amount of melanin in your iris.
There's still no successful method of transplanting an eyeball. The optic nerve that connects the eye to the brain is too sensitive to reconstruct successfully.
Heterochromia is the (pretty darn cool) condition where your eyes are two different colors.
Out of all the body's muscles, the ones that control your eyes are the most active.
Babies are born color blind.
Blue-eyed people have a common ancestor with every other blue-eyed person.
During major depression episodes, people see less contrast, making colors seem duller.
Smoking reduces night vision.
Under the right conditions, humans are capable of seeing the light of a candle 14 miles away.
It kind of feels like laser eye surgery (a.k.a. LASIK) has been around forever. But the first procedures in the U.S. took place in 1999.
Geckos can see colors 350 times better than a human.
To prevent sore eyes, be sure to follow the 20-20-20 rule while working on a computer: look at something twenty feet away from your computer every twenty minutes for twenty seconds.