Introduction

→ Human eye: The sense organ that helps us to see.

Parts of Human Eye

• Cornea: It is the outermost, transparent part. It provides most of the refraction of light.

• Lens: It is composed of a fibrous, jelly like material. Provides the focused real and inverted
image of the object on the retina. This is a convex lens that converges light at the retina.

• Iris: It is a dark muscular diaphragm that controls the size of the pupil.

• Pupil: It is the window of the eye. It is the central aperture in iris. It regulates and controls the
amount of light entering the eye.

• Retina: It is a delicate membrane having an enormous number of light sensitive cells.

• Far point: The maximum distance at which an object can be seen clearly is far from the eye.
For a normal adult eye, its value is infinity.

Near point or Least distance of distinct vision

→ The minimum distance at which objects can be seen most distinctively without strain.

→ For a normal adult eye, its value is 25 cm.

→ Range of human vision – 25 cm to infinity.

• Accomodation: The ability of the eye lens to adjust its focal length is called accommodation.
Focal length can be changed with the help of ciliary muscles.

→ Focal length increases when Ciliary muscles get relaxed and lenses get thin.

→ Focal length decreases when Ciliary muscles contract and lenses get thick.
Myopia (Near sightedness)

→ A myopic person can see nearby objects clearly but cannot see distant objects clearly.
→ The image is formed in front of the retina.

Causes of Myopia

→ Excessive curvature of the eye lens.

→ Elongation of eye ball

Correction of Myopia

→ It is done by using a concave lens of appropriate power.

(i) In a myopic eye, image of distant object is formed in front of the retina. and not on the retina
(ii) The far point (F) of a myopic eye is less than infinity.

(iii) Correction of myopia. The concave lens placed in front of the eye forms a virtual image of a
distant object at far point (F) of the myopic eye.
Hypermetropia (Far sightedness)

→ Affected people can see far objects clearly but cannot see nearby objects clearly.

→ The near point of the eye moves away.

→ Image is formed behind the retina.

Causes of Hypermetropia

→ Focal length of the eye lens becomes too long.

→ The eyeball becomes too small.

Correction of Hypermetropia

→ Use of convex lenses of suitable power can correct the defect.

Presbyopia (Old age Hypermetropia)

→ It is the defect of vision due to which an old person cannot see the nearby objects clearly due
to loss of power of accommodation of the eye.

→ The near-point of the old person having presbyopia gradually recedes and becomes much
more than 25 cm away.
Causes of Presbyopia

→ Gradual weakening of ciliary muscles.

→ Diminishing flexibility of eye lens.

Correction of Presbyopia

→ Use a convex lens of suitable power.

→ Sometimes a person may suffer from both myopia and hypermetropia.

→ Such people require bifocal lenses for correction.

Advantage of the eyes in front of the face

→ It gives a wider field of view.

→ It enhances the ability to detect faint objects.

→ It provides a three dimensional view.

Refraction through a glass prism

• Prism: It is a pyramidal piece of glass with two triangular bases and three rectangular lateral
surfaces.

• Angle of Prism: The angle between two adjoining lateral surfaces. Refraction through a glass
prism.
Angle of deviation (d): It is the angle between incident ray and emergent ray.

When white light is passed through a glass prism, it splits into its seven constituent colours to
form a band of seven colours. This phenomenon is called dispersion.

• Spectrum: The band of seven colours formed due to dispersion of white light is called
spectrum.

• Acronym: It is a group of alphabets that represent sequential colours in the spectrum.

→ Angle of deviation ∝ 1/wavelength

→ Violet is the most deviated colour as it has the smallest wavelength in visible spectrum.

→ Issac Newton was the first person who proved that sunlight is made up of seven colours :
(i) He passed sunlight through a glass prism to form a band of seven colours.

(ii) He tried to split the colours further by putting another prism ahead of the prism forming
spectrum but he failed to obtain more colours.

(iii) He formed a spectrum from sunlight and placed an identical but inverted prism in front of the
prism forming the spectrum. All the seven colours combined by the inverted prism and emerged
as white light.

Total Internal Reflection

→ When light enters obliquely from a denser medium to a rarer medium and the angle of
incidence exceeds critical angle, the light reflects in the denser medium. This is called internal
reflection.

Conditions necessary for Internal Reflection

→ Light should enter obliquely from a denser to a rarer medium.

→ The angle of incidence should exceed critical angle, the light reflects in the denser medium.

• Critical angle: The angle of incidence for which the angle of refraction is 90º.
• Rainbow: It is a natural spectrum appearing in the sky after rain showers. The rainbow is
observed in the direction opposite to the sun.

Three phenomenon which are involved in rainbow formation are :

→ Some water droplets remain suspended in air after rain. These droplets behave as glass
prisms.

→ When light enters the rain drop, it first refracts and disperses.

→ Then it reflects internally and again refracts as it comes out of the drop and the seven colours
reach the eye of the observer in the form of a rainbow.

Atmospheric Refraction: The refraction by different layers of atmosphere is called

(1) Stars near the horizon appear slightly higher than their actual position.
(2) Advanced sunrise and delayed sunset.
(3) Apparent flattering of the sun's disc.
(4) Twinkling of stars.
Stars when seen near the horizon appear slightly higher than their actual position due to
atmospheric refraction.

→ The refractive index of earth’s atmosphere in general increases from top to bottom.
→ So, the light coming from a star near the horizon has to travel from rarer to denser medium
and it bends towards the normal.
→ As a result the star appears higher

Advanced sunrise
The sun appears about two minutes earlier than actual sunrise and the sun remains visible for
about two minutes after actual sunset.
→ When the sun is below the horizon, the rays have to pass from rarer to denser medium.
So rays bend towards the normal. As a result the sun appears higher than its actual position.

Twinkling of stars

→ Stars are very far from us, so they behave as point sources of light.
→ Since the physical conditions of the earth’s atmosphere are not constant the light from
stars appear to come from different directions.
→ This results in fluctuation of apparent position of the star.
→ The amount of light coming from stars also varies due to changing Refractive Index of
atmosphere.
→ The star appears bright when more light from the star reaches our eyes and the same star
appears dull when less light reaches our eyes.
→ Both these effects are responsible for the twinkling of stars.

Scattering effect

Spreading of light in various directions by colloid particles.

Scattering ∝ 1/wavelength

• Tyndall effect: When light passes through a colloid its path becomes visible. This is called the
Tyndall effect.
Example:

(i) Path of light becomes visible when light enters a dark and dusty room through a slit or
ventilator.

(ii) Path of light becomes visible when light passes through dense canopy of trees in a forest.

Danger signs are made in red colour

→ Red is the least scattered colour. It is least scattered by fog and smoke and can be seen in
the same colour over a long distance. So, danger signs are made in red colour.

• Colour of sky appears blue on a clear day

→ The upper layer of the atmosphere contains very fine particles of water vapours and gases.
These particles are more effective in scattering light of shorter wavelengths, mainly blue, than
larger wavelengths. So, the sky appears blue.

• Appearance of sky to an astronaut in the space

→ The sky would appear dark to an astronaut in space as scattering is not very prominent at
such high altitude due to the absence of particles.

• Clouds appear white

→ Clouds are formed by water vapours. Water vapours condense to form water droplets due to
larger size of droplets, all colours of light are scattered and clouds appear white.

• Colour of sun appear red during sunrise and sunset

→ During sunset and sunrise, the colour of the sun and its surroundings appear red. During
sunset and sunrise, the sun is near the horizon and therefore the sunlight has to travel a larger
distance in the atmosphere.
→ Due to this most of the blue light (shorter wavelength) is scattered away by the particles. The
light of longer wavelength (red colour) will reach our eye. This is why the sun appears red in
colour.