Our Sense of Sight

Our Sense of Sight

Our Sense of Sight
Reading Level

	edHelper's suggested reading level:	grades 7 to 8
	Flesch-Kincaid grade level:	7.37

Vocabulary

challenging words:

acuity, optic, photoreceptors, vitreous, jelly-like, covering, binocular, colored, better, cornea, retina, shutter, reading, material, blackboard, surrounding

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Our Sense of Sight
By Sharon Fabian

¹     When you take a picture with a camera, you push the button, and the shutter opens just long enough to let in enough light. The light, which is reflected from the people and things that you are taking a picture of, focuses on the film in the camera where it leaves a picture, or image. Our eyes work much like a camera. They take in light and focus it on a particular spot to create an image.

²     Light enters our eye through the pupil, the black part of the eye. Surrounding the pupil is the colored part called the iris. The pupil is actually an opening especially for collecting light, and the iris is a set of muscles that adjust the opening to let in just the right amount of light. That is why your pupil gets larger in a dark room and smaller in bright sunlight. The iris is adjusting it for the amount of light. Covering the iris and the pupil is a tough, clear covering called the cornea.

³     After light passes through the pupil, it next passes through the lens, which focuses the image some more. Muscles surrounding the lens stretch or relax to make it focus just right. The lens focuses the image onto the retina, which covers most of the back part of the eye. At this point the image is upside down! The retina is covered with tiny parts called photoreceptors, which change the light energy into electrical energy. The electrical signals are picked up by the optic nerve at the back of the eye. The optic nerve is actually made up of millions of very tiny bundles of nerves, which send the message (or the picture, or the image, whatever you would like to call it) to the brain.

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