All light is invisible. What are we looking at?

Question

I did a little research before asking this. Everybody seems to think light is visible. Its not.

Turn on a flashlight and point it away from you. Now think for a moment. Do you see light spewing forth from the flashlight? No, you don't.

Look at a helicopter searching for criminals. Do you see light spewing forth fron the copter? No.

Your sitting in a room. The celing lamp has four 100 watt bulbs in it. Think a moment. Do you see the light? No. You see your surroundings.

Light is invisible. What are we looking at?

Why cant a blind man see?

Answer 1

You're retina has little cones in it that are stimulated by photons. The brain translates the information from there... these black squiggly lines are translated into the words that we both see.

A blind person can't see because the light waves don't reach his /her retina, or the information from his retina doesn't reach his/her brain.

Answer 2

No, light is not invisible. It is true that you cannot see the light of a flashlight when it is pointed away from you. But that is not because it is invisible. It's simply because the light is not reaching your eyes! If you point the flashlight at your eyes so that the light reaches your eyes, then you can certainly see the light. At least, I can. The helicopter does not spew light from it. It receives light reflected or emitted from objects on the ground. Sitting in the lit room you see the surroundings when you look at the surroundings. If you look at the lamp fixture, you will surely see the light. A blind man can't see because his vision receptors don't work. I hope yours are working so that you will see the light.

Answer 3

What a silly question!!!

If u point the light away from you, it won't bend back into your eyes (LIGHT TRAVELS IN STRAIGHT LINES). In some cases, when the light source is large, and the light passes through a large hole, the diffraction causes the light to disperse and we can see the light even with our back to the source as it scatters all around us.

The helicopter searching for a criminal also uses a source of light that produces a coherent spotlight beam, not spread out like the Sun.

We see the light in the room reflected off the surroundings when we do not look at the bulbs themselves.

A blind man can't see because of damage to his retina. The retina contains light sensitive cells called rods and cones. When light strikes these cells, it causes a chemical reaction (e.g. in rods, the pigment rhodopsin breaks down to opsin and retinal). This fires off a nerve impulse in the optic nerve, which sends the data to the brain, which then interprets the message. We are in fact looking at the light, what we appear to see is the brain's interpretation of it.

Check ur facts before posting questions.

Answer 4

I think by visible light scientist mean light that we can detect with our eyes. For example, when you turn on a light, you detect its effect on the environment. Also when you look up at night at the sky and see stars, you are only seeing the "visible" spectrum of light that reaches us, which is a very small portion of the entire spectrum of light. Most parts of the light spectrum, like x-rays (which is also light) cannot be detected by our eyes.

Actually it's pretty interesting because we see because our eyes absorb photons (light). So when light hits an object, the electrons in an object absorb the photons and and then emitt photons, which are picked up by our eyes and used to form an impression of the world. The eyes can only detect photons in the "visible" spectrum so in essense when you are looking at an object, you are not seeing it, you are seeing the light it has reflected to your eyes (and not even all of the light, just a small part of the light spectrum). In that sense not all light is invisible, most still is, but we use a small part of the light spectrum to see.

I don't know much about blindness, but I'm assuming that a blind man's retina is not working and can't convert light into an image...I'm sure there are many causes of blindness though (eye diseases, etc).

Answer 5

You also cannot see what is immediately behind you ... but that doesn't mean it is "invisible".

Your eyes can only see what they are looking at. Light can only be visible if it reaches your eyes ... so the light from a flashlight pointed away from you is not "invisible", it is just not reaching your eyes ... unless it bounces off something and then reaches your eyes.

A blind man can't see because his visual system is not responding to the light that is reaching his eyes.

Answer 6

Pass a light ray through a prism, in an complete dark room, then see. A blind man does not see, because his eyes can not absorb the light rays.

Answer 7

you know that light is electromagnetic wave's one section that our eyes can interpret. actually when EM waves of wavelength of light (or approximate)enters our eyes, some sort of chemical actions happens. it seems that EM waves carry some information of the things they are reflected of, like distance, or whether it's colour is dark or light. we are, in right sense, observing the things through the light, but take it as absolute sense which is wrong actually. the scientific term of relativization is used nowadays to mean that existence of thngs are taken by the actions of other matter on them, and surely our senses are not developed so much: the question asked is a corollary of this fact.

Answer 8

light is invisible if it is going away from you. Light is visible when it enters your eye and is received by the retina and converted to nerve impulses that travel thru the optic nerve to the brain to give the brain the image.

Answer 9

Light is perfectly visible when it enters your eye. If you point a flashlight away from you, it is not entering your eye. There is no mystery here.

Answer 10

light is not visible but what you see is the color, wich is the reflection of the object and it goes into your eye, and

a blind men cant see because his eyes were severly hurt, or geneticly, or something for the nervous system,