Why do humans squint when they are trying to see something better?
Is it because they are just trying to cut off the “extra” parts of their vision that they don’t need to focus on? If that’s the case it would be more of a trying to focus on the thing better’ rather than see it better. Like covering up the distractions so you can’t see them.
I don’t know how the topic crossed my mind, but it did. No sooner had I gotten the idea, I was already squinting at near and distant objects only to find that half closing my eyes a little, and straining my
sight a little more, resulted in blurring and dimming my vision; slightly. When you squint your eyes, your ability to see things clearly, decreases exponentially until you cant see at all.. when your
eyelids are closed completely of course. This is what I had concluded after my many trials of research; squinting at things in public places. I’m sure I looked quite the idiot.
When you squint, you are loosing vision. This is fact. What else is fact that eyelashes exist. It’s not a just clean cut to the height and depth of your vision, your eyelashes get in the way. But try squinting now. Even when looking closely you can’t see your own eyelashes properly without the help of some sort of mirror. Because they are blurring. They are cutting access for light to get to your eyes. Everything you see is light. You are not seeing the actual objects before you, but you are seeing the light reflected from the objects. People cant see in the dark… So when your eyelashes get in the way, you see less.
Eyeballs have a thin film of fluid coated over it. This fluid will dry out if you forget to blink and will renew once you do. The fluid is there so that your eyes stay moist and don’t stick to the eyelid (which would be pretty bad for you if it ever did start doing that; never forget to blink). But a your eyes close, this film will
thicken. It may be an extremely small ammout but it is still liquid. This means that the liquid closest to the rim of your eyes will be thickest. Even thought the region is small, your vision through this area will blur minorly. As you close your eyes you will be moving this closer to the center of your vision. The difference of the ratio between your clear vision and your blurred rim will become smaller until it does make a siffernce for you, slightly.
Your eyeballs are spherical, your irus has a lense used to automatically focus your vision, and your pupil determins how much light is let into your eyes. You can’t control the actions of your pupil volunterily, and you can change your eyeballs from being spherical (without assuming damage). The one stated there that you can actually change, is the lense of your eyes. Depending on how much a magnification you require to see an object clearly muscles inside of your eye will expand to increase the width of your eye’s lense
(increasing the curvature and strengthening magnivity -I dont think thats a word) or contract to give the opposite effect. If you are squinting, your upper and lower eyelids are forcing pressure onto this
lense restricting how well it can change. The lenses will not be able to adjust properly.
All three of my above points make sense. But not if you are trying to see better.
I still couldn’t understand. Why was it almost instinct for a person to squint when they want a better view when all that does is cripple your vision? This question plagued me for ages.
Okay, I was lying. It didn’t plague me, but I was curious nonetheless. And I wasn’t curious for long either. The answer hit me soon enough. It might have been something extremely obvious that we all took for granted without realising the instinctial physics behind why we have the need to squint.
When you squint, you are loosing vision. This is fact. When you squint, you are blurring and capping your sight. This is again; fact. Another fact is that your eyeballs have lenses. Two of them. This is critical knowledge when questioning the effectiveness of squinting.
If you are seeing through two lenses, when objects get far enough you wont be able to realise that you are seeing from two different angles beig blended together because the “width” or the distance between your
two lenses (or the angle each makes with a line of “normal” from the object you are viewing) becomes insignificant.
On the other hand, when an object becomes within the range of your eyes that you are seeing too much, you begin to see “double”. The inverted commas because you are seeing the same item from two differnt
angles. One eye will be able to see through the most of what the other eye is seeing as solid. This is what backs up the science of the old trick of rolling up a piece of paper into a tube and then looking through it into a light as if it were a telescope and holding your hand beside the tube infront of your free eye, palm facing towards.
The images you see from your separate eyes become overlapped, and I re-state. You are seeing too much.
By squinting at objects closer than your abled vision distance, this somehow makes you see things clearer… but only at this range. I don’t know the physics/science behind why this works so but there is a
very good chance that I will go away and think about it and come back when I think I’ve figured it out.
-unfinished-
