Light is actively bounced out of the eye towards objects, so we can see
Keith S. Taber
Sophia was a participant in the Understanding Science Project. Y8 pupil Sophia had been studying sound and light in her school science lessons. Her model of sight involved light entering the eye, but then reflecting out again.
Do you know how you hear and see?
Does the light come in your eye, and it reflects off so you can see. … Just reflects, does it, and bounces on.
So if I've got my eye, some light comes in, some light comes in, what does it do, it bounces where?
About.
Inside the eye?
No around … it bounces out.
And then what?
Then you can see…so you look where you want to see, so it bounces off like in that direction, …you've got to actually look over, …you've got to look that way.
One long-established historical model of sight was based on rays coming from the eyes to detect objects in the outside world. Sophia's model appears to be a hybrid of this historical model, and modern understandings. For Sophia, light does not originate form the eye, but bounds out of it towards the object of sight. The idea that something must come out of the eye for us to see seems to be an intuitive assumption some people make – perhaps because we actually turn out heads and direct out eyes at what we want to focus on. This intuition has potential to act as a grounded learning impediment to learning the scientific model for vision.
