My ten years old got into soccer recently and he’s getting good at it, except, he has this paranoia that he’ll get blind (or will have severe eye damage) if he traces the ball through the air against a sunny backdrop. Because of this he won’t practice in the evening and this is when most training happens.
We had an eclipse recently and I think he took the “don’t look at the sun” mantra way too far and I don’t know how to undo that.
Please help!!!
In: Physics
Everyone glances at the sun for a couple seconds at a time. It’s prolonged staring that does eye damage, such as people are inclined to do during an eclipse.
Solar eclipses are special considerations; and not every day rules
Rising and setting sun is weaker because the rays pass through more atmosphere to reach us
Staring at the sun is never “good”…..but we all glance at the sun dozens of times per week.
here is a scientific sounding answer you can tell him that should help him.
When the sun is lower in the sky, it passes through more of the atmosphere (more of the air) which is why it turns an orange and red color. At these times it is safe to look at the sun for a few seconds or to see the sun out of the side of your eye because that red and orange light is less intense and less damaging to our eyes.
This is also why it is safe to watch a sunset.
Is he looking DIRECTLY at the Sun? Then yes, it’s dangerous. Is he kinda squinting in the direction of the Sun? Probably not.
Your ancestors fought and hunted in the sun all day, tracking birds and other animals.
You are evolved to be active in the sun. Just don’t *stare* at it.
Its like looking at boobs. You just get a sense of it and look away!
Did he just read the book Tangerine?
Can you get him goggles? Even if it doesn’t do permanent damage to the eyes, it sucks trying to trace the ball that goes in front of the sun.
There are some cool looking sports sunglasses he can use.
Demonstrate what happens to a flammable object (such as a toothpick) when you briefly pass it over a candle flame, vs holding it over for a longer period of time. I would suggest the “brief time” experiment with your finger, but that may be too impressionable for a kid.
Don’t look at the sun directly. That’s why the eclipse is hazardous, as people are looking at it directly. Staring straight at the sun is and always will be bad for your eyes but that’s just staring at it directly. Hell, even looking directly at it won’t make you to blind unless you can manage to look for so long it burns your eyes out, a small glimpse of the direct thing isn’t harmful and if it was everyone over 35 would be blind. If accidental glimpses of the whole sun could blind us we would have died out a long time ago, evolution gave us the ability to withstand seeing everything short of staring directly into the sun for extended periods of time.
Does he have other “worries” like that, or is this just a one-off? Because that was me as a kid and it turned out it was OCD but took 20 years of therapy to figure that out
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