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Human eye and the colourful world

Human eye: It is a naturally occurring optical instrument it enable us to see.
Structure of eye
 

Cornea: It is convex in shape and allows light to enter.

Iris: It is coloured part of the eye.It holds the pupil and also adjust the size of pupil according to the intensity of
light.
Pupil: It is black in color and absorbs all the light rays falling on it.
Ciliary muscles: They hold the lens in place. They adjust the focal length of the lens.
Convex lens: A cellular structure resembling convex lens (diverging lens).
Retina : It is the screen of an eye where image is formed.
It consists of two types of cells:
1. Cone cells: those cells which respond to colours.
2. Rod cells: those cells which respond to the intensity of light.
Blind spot: It is that point on the retina where no image is formed.
Optic nerve: A nerve that connects the eye to the brain.
Accommodation of eye: It is the ability of the eye lens to adjust its focal length so that a clear image is formed
on the retina that can be easily recognized by our brain.
In case of far off objects.
In order to see a far off object, our ciliary muscles, lens and focal length undergo a change i.e. the ciliary
muscles relax, lens become thin and elongated and focal length increases.
In case of nearby objects.
In order to see nearby objects, focal length of the lens and ciliary muscles undergo a change.
ciliary muscles contract, lens become thick and short and the focal length decreases.
Eye defects
Myopia (Short sightedness): It is a defect in which a person is unable to see far objects clearly but can see
nearby objects. The cause for this is that
• the ciliary muscles do not relax properly, The lens does not elongate properly due to which the focal length
does not increase properly. As a result no clear image is formed.
• Eyeball being too elongated, the converging power of lens being too high.
Correction: It can be done by using spectacles containing concave lens that diverge the rays first so that our
eye lens can converge them properly on the retina.
 

Hypermetropia (Long sightedness): It is a defect in which a person is unable to see nearby objects but can see
far off objects clearly. The cause is that the
•the ciliary muscles do not contract properly, the lens does not become thick and short due to which the focal
length doesn’t decrease. As a result, the image formed is not clear and can’t be identified by the brain.
•Eyeballs being too short and converging power of the lens being too low.
Correction: It can be done by using spectacles containing convex lens that increase the ciliary power of the eye
lens so that it can converge rays properly on the retina.
Presbyopia: It happens with gradual increase in age. Our ciliary muscles like other muscles weaken, i.e. they
can’t contract or relax properly. As a result, a person can’t see near or far off objects clearly.
Correction: It can be done by the use of spectacles containing bifocal lens.
Refraction through prism
Prism: It is a piece of glass or any transparent material bounded by two triangular and three rectangular
surfaces.
Difference between refraction through glass prism and glass slab is as follows-
In slab, the emergent ray is parallel to the incident ray but in case of prism, emergent ray is not parallel to the
incident ray because opposite faces of prism are not parallel to each other.
Dispersion: It is defined as the phenomenon of splitting of whitelight into seven colors.

Rainbow: It is an example of dispersion (Spectrum formed by dispersion of sunlight). “It is formed due to
dispersion of white sunlight by raindrops in the atmosphere. Each raindrop acts as a tiny glass prism. Rainbow
is always formed opposite to the sun. White light enters these raindrops, different colour rays are refracted
through different angles due to which the rainbow is formed.
Atmospheric Refraction: The refraction through different layers of refraction due to different layers of
atmosphere having varying densities.
Applications of atmospheric refraction
Twinkling of stars and apparent position.
Twinkling of stars
Stars emit their own light and they twinkle due to the atmospheric refraction of light. Stars are very far away
from the earth. Hence, they are considered as point sources of light. When the light coming from stars enters
the earth’s atmosphere, it gets refracted at different levels because of the variation in the air density at
different levels of the atmosphere. When the atmosphere refracts more star-light towards us, the star appears
to be bright and when the atmosphere refracts less star-light, then the star appears to be dim. Therefore, it
appears as if the stars are twinkling at night.
The planets do not twinkle.
Ans. Planets do not twinkle because they appear larger in size than the stars as they are relatively closer to
Earth. Planets can be considered as a collection of a large number of point-size sources of light.
The different parts of these planets produce either brighter or dimmer effect in such a way that the average of
brighter and dimmer effects is zero. Hence, planets not twinkle.
Position of stars
A star appears slightly higher than it’s actual position in the sky because of the atmospheric refraction. Due to
the continuous refraction of star light as the air higher up in the sky is rare but that nearer the earth’s surface
is denser. 
Day increases by four minutes
When the Sun is just below the horizon, the light from the Sun, while coming towards the Earth, suffers
refraction from a rarer to a denser layer and so it bends towards the normal at each refraction. Due to the
continuous bending of light at different successive layers, the Sun can be seen even when its actual position is
just below the horizon in the morning.

Similarly, in the evening, the sun is seen few minutes longer above the horizon after it has actually set below
the horizon. Thus in overall a day increased by 4 minutes.

Scattering: The process in which light is transmitted in all directions when it is incident on a particle which has
greater diameter is called scattering.
Applications of Scattering:
Sky appears blue
When white light passes through the atmosphere, violet, indigo and blue colours encounter suspended
particles. These waves are absorbed and then scattered and are received by our eyes.
Sun appear reddish early in the morning
During sunrise, the light rays coming from the Sun have to travel a greater distance in the earth’s atmosphere
before reaching our eyes. In this journey, the shorter wavelengths of light are scattered out and only longer
wavelengths are able to reach our eyes. The red colour is scattered the least and is able to reach our eyes.
Therefore, the Sun appears reddish early in the morning.
Sky appear dark instead of blue to an astronaut
The sky appears dark instead of blue to an astronaut, as a outer earth’s atmosphere lack particles.