why do your eyes adjust so fast to bright light but so slowly to darkness?
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Your eyes contain 4 different types of light sensors. The first 3 see color and the 4th sees shades of gray.
In order to “respond” to light, the sensors use chemicals that interact with the light *color* they see. So chemical X responds to Green colored light, chemical y to Red and chemical Z to any light, but only responds in shades of gray.
Long story short, the gray chemical, chemical Z gets destroyed by bright light, any kind of bright light melts it away and your eye needs to build more up before you can see gray-scale.
So if you’re in bright light and then suddenly go into the dark, you have no chemical Z and it needs to restore over a short few minutes and then you can see in the dark at least a little bit.
Fun Fact: Red light does NOT destroy chemical Z. This is why military aircraft and vehicles that operate at night use Red lights in the cabins before dumping the soldiers off into a battlefield. You can leave the vehicle with full night vision intact.
Adjusting to bright light is different, a muscle in your eye just squeezes the eye-hole tighter reducing the amount of light that gets through into your eye in the first place. It happens pretty dang quick.
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