Why aren’t my high-power spectacles effective under water as they are in the air?

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I’ve dealt with this problem all my life – i have high powered glasses (-6 and – 8, with some cylindrical /spherical tweaks). My glasses work great. But i wore them while swimming in the crystal blue Mediterranean, and when I’m diving in, i realized the glasses aren’t effective. I understand the wavy reflective patterns interrupting, but why cant I focus on anything easily?

In: Physics

9 Answers

Anonymous 0 Comments

If you wear them inside goggles, they do work, but that may also let water leak into the goggles.

Every curved boundary between two materials matters here. The boundary between your eye and the air will bend light less underwater, and the boundary between the lens and the air will bend light less underwater, because the difference in refractive index is smaller between water and eye/lens than between air and eye/lens.

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