Experiment
Pencil in the bottle
Did a large eye located in the middle of the forehead do the same job as our two eyes do?
Curriculum objectives – Science:
- explore the senses through play outside and inside and talk about how the senses are used to gather information
You need:
- A bottle
- A pencil or pen
This is what you do:
Place a bottle on a table in front of you. Sit so that the bottle spout is at eye level and approximately 20 cm from you. Hold your hand in front of one eye and try to insert a pencil into the opening of the bottle.
Observe:
Can you hit on the first try? Repeat with both eyes open.
What is going on?
We see two different images with the left and right eye. Since our eyes are placed a few centimeters apart, the right eye sees things from a slightly different angle than the left. Therefore, we can see in depth (three-dimensionally) when the brain puts the images together into one image for us. This helps us to find out the distance of things. If we only see with one eye, depth vision becomes worse, and it can be difficult to judge distance, for example so that we get the pencil into the bottle.
