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

Water doesn’t really work with glasses.

Glasses work by refracting* light at a specific angle to essentially offset your vision impairment, which is a sort of distance-distortion due to shape your eyes + lenses. But, light travels differently through water than through air, and the interface between air/water and glass essentially defines >how< that light is bent.

So in water, it will *not* bend the way it’s supposed to in air. Hence, it no longer properly corrects your vision.

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