How Sunglasses work? - CoolSunglasses.nl | Cool Sunglasses at a cool price

How Sunglasses work?

Have you ever wondered how sunglasses work? How can two pieces of glass or plastic protect your eyes from the harmful rays of the sun and even make your vision clearer at times?

In order to understand how sunglasses work, it is first necessary to understand the interplay between sunlight and your eyes.

About Sunlight
The sun produces ultraviolet light. This ultraviolet light is high in energy. Without adequate protection, ultraviolet light can damage your eyes, specifically your retina and your cornea.

The sun also produces extremely bright light. Our eyes cannot easily absorb this kind of light; thus, when we look at areas with bright lights, we instead see white flashes. This is what we know as glare. When exposed repeatedly to such bright lights, it can result in blindness.

How Sunlight Travels

There are basically two ways of how sunlight can reach your eyes: directly, where direct light travels towards your eyes; or indirectly, where reflected light is what you see.

Direct light is a kind of light that comes from a specific light source, such as the sun, straight to your eyes. When there is too much direct light, it is hard to keep a focus on objects and some of your surroundings may become hazy.

On the other hand, reflected light is a kind of light that bounces off another object, such as glass, snow or water, before it reaches your eyes. When there is too much reflected light, it may also be difficult to see your surroundings clearly.

What Sunglasses Do
At the very least, effective sunglasses should be able to protect your eyes from the ultraviolet wavelength and the glare of both direct light and reflected light. Good-quality sunglasses are able to effectively adjust the light in order to match your eyes.

In order to filter out UV light, the lenses of your sunglasses are coated with special chemicals that allow specific frequencies of light to pass through, while preventing others. At the same time, effective sunglasses can also minimize glare. Tinted lenses minimize the amount of bright light entering your eyes. Also, the lenses of polarized sunglasses are coated with a chemical film to be able to create a filter for light rays.

Once the sunlight hits your sunglasses, the UV coating on your sunglasses will reflect the high-frequency UV light away from your eyes, preventing damage to your eye’s retina and cornea. Also, the polarized filter on your sunglasses will absorb any light that matches the alignment of its molecules, eliminating the glare produced by intense light sources. By decreasing the glare, the surroundings appear much clearer, allowing you to focus better on objects without the need to squint.

These are only the basic principles of how sunglasses work. Sunglasses nowadays have even more features, such as contrast enhancement, improved depth perception and infrared protection, to name a few.

The next time you put on your sunglasses, you can be sure that your eyes are safe and protected from the harsh sunlight. Now you know!