Why do we have two eyes?
We started the class with two experiments. In the first, students looked at the clock on the wall. They closed one eye and held up their arm and lined up their thumb with the object. Now without moving their thumb or their head, they closed the opened eye and opened the closed eye. The object in the distance appears to jump to the side...and their finger will no longer be lined up. This shows that different images fall on each eye. In the second experiment they teamed up in pairs and stood across from each other. Each person held a pen in their right hand. They shut one eye and tried to touch the pens together (tip-to-tip). In this experiment students learned that having two eyes is what enables us to have depth perception. | According to Fact Monster “Each eye sees the world from a different angle, creating slightly different pictures. The brain combines these two pictures into a single, three-dimensional image. This is called binocular vision.” It enables us to see depth. |
How the Eye Works Wrap Up
This video reviews all the concepts that we covered this week. | |
The Brains Role in Sight
The students were asked to watch this video and count how many times the people in white pass the ball. This activity demonstrates how we don't process everything that we see. The brain determines what we actually see and what we don't. | |
Adaptation
In preparation for our research project where the students will be researching how animals senses have adapted to help them survive, we watched a couple of videos. The first covers Charles Darwin, evolution, and natural selection. The second video describes the evolution of the eye.
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