I went to a doctor for my eye checkup. And I couldn’t read the last line at all. Doctor said this is the limit to your eye and no matter how strong a lens, you would never be able to read the last line

Question

But I don’t get it. Why would if I put a stronger lens, I wouldn’t be able to read the last line? She said you must have never been able to read the last line in your life, and she was correct, but I don’t understand the science at play here

In: 58

Answer 1

Hi!

There are some things that are easily correctable, and others that are less easily correctable.

If you think of a telescope or binoculars you have a collection of lenses (or a prism, or mirrors) at different places in a tube and different distances apart that let you adjust focus so in that sense **the doctor is wrong that your vision can not be corrected in some way to let you read the bottom row**.

More generally, your doctor is correct that there is no easy, cost effective way to improve your vision because the distance between your eye and your glasses lens does not change (the way it does in a telescope or binoculars).

You might find that contact lenses or laser visual correction can give you better vision than glasses.

This youtube video gives some good visuals.

edit – here is a good one for laser eye surgery.