The science of vision is much misrepresented in popular science, with the same myths being endlessly recycled. This is a talk with demonstrations that I wrote in an effort to set the record straight. I first delivered the talk at the British Interactive Group (BIG) annual meeting in July 2007 (see right).
In September 2007 I also gave the talk twice in German. The first was to new gallery staff at the Phaeno science centre in Wolfsburg, Germany, as part of a training day. The second was to an audience of 60 schoolteachers, pupils, and other friends of Turm der Sinne, a minute and very lovely science centre dedicated to perception, in Nuremberg.
You can find the slides from the German version of the talk on the Turm der Sinne website. Unfortunately I can't do a direct link. Go to the Turm der Sinne home page and then follow the links Museum-Veranstaltungen-Archiv. In the list of events, it's dated 27.09.07.
I also be presented it at Wrexham Science Festival in March 2007 and at Glasgow Science Festival in summer 2008.
I delivered a variant of this talk as part of the annual series of evening lectures at the Planetarium of Glasgow Science Centre.
The Ten True Things are:
- Changes in the size of your pupil do not keep the amount of light entering your eye constant.
- The main optical element in your eye is not the lens - it is the front surface of the cornea.
- An eye doesn't need to be "perfect" to be useful (a counterblast to creationists).
- Some illusions show us how how good our sense of vision is.
- The image in your eye is indeed upside-down, but your brain does not have to turn it right way up again.
- By mixing red, green, and blue lights you can create a wide range of colours, but not every colour.
- White can be made by mixing together all the colours of the spectrum - but actually, you only need two colours.
- Seeing smooth movement in animations is not down to persistence of vision.
- You do not need two eyes to be able to tell how far away things are.
- Black is not the absence of light.
In each case I used demonstrations or simple arguments to show the truth of my propositions. I also showed a number of gratuitous demonstrations, just because I like them.