Eli5: How come solar-powered lights don’t get confused by their own light and then shut off?
In: 5
Your eyes do not detect brightness in an equal, linear fashion. As things get brighter, your eyes stop being able to detect changes in brightness as much.
What this means is that something that’s 10 units of brightness might look 10x brighter than something that’s 1. But in order to look 10x brighter again, you may need 1000 units or even 10000. Not 100.
The sun is really, really, REALLY bright. Thousands of times brighter than the brightest standard light bulb shining directly on them. Even on a cloudy day. It just doesn’t seem that way to our eyes.
Meaning these bulbs’ light sensors, which don’t have such limitations in their perception, usually have absolutely no problem telling the difference in brightness between the sun, and their own light.
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