Life in the Light

No matter what, there is some things life that we take for granted. It may be people, it may be material objects, or it may be abilities we possess. I think one of the greatest things we over look is most of the world’s ability to see. Without sight, we’d all be living in a world of eternal darkness.  We’d never know of the sun or see the spark of joy in a child’s eye. We’d never see the blue of a hot summer day or the rainbow after the rain. Just think about how different this world would be if there was no light to see by. The darkness and black are okay at times, but it’s the colors that make this world so special and unique. Look around and try not to take something so simple as seeing for granted.

Light verses Sound

Have you ever tried to figure out the distance of a lighting strike by listening for its thunder? I used to do that all the time. Though, because of everything that I’ve learned over the past year, a thought occurred to me. Does the counting the seconds method work for all weather conditions? No matter what, I believe light travels at a constant rate. It also isn’t reliant on the molecules around it to travel any amount of distance.  Sound waves, on the other hand need some kind of medium to travel through. That’s why we see the stars in the sky but no one can hear you scream in space. Because of the way sound works, I wonder how much of a difference the air properties have on the distance of lightning. 

Epic Fail

It kind of sucks that cameras don’t see what we see. I would love to capture some of the shadow formations or the moon, but I can’t. It’s not my inability to take a good photo. I have some fairly decent ones on my deviantArt page to prove that I have some photography skills. It’s all the camera’s fault. They just can’t pick up light like your eyes naturally can. I was up a few nights ago just sitting I my room and noticed that I cast an interesting shadow. It came from the light of my alarm clock. I went to snap a photo of it just to see if I could, no the camera couldn’t pick it up. I’d love to see if they get to a point in the future with technology is they can make a camera the reacts closer to the human eye in light reception.

I'm Blue

I think that being in artificial light just effected to way I see things in low natural light. It was about halfway dark and I went outside to check my mail. Walking out to the mailboxes, looked like it had a blue haze to it. It was like being in a strange movie where all by certain things are all the same color scheme. The only area that didn’t look blue was around this one lamppost where it was all very orange. It all just seemed very strange to me.

Distance Makes a Difference

Picture Courtesy of Elizabeth Bruffey

Depending on where you are on Earth, the sky looks differently. And I’m not just talking about which constellations are in the sky where at night, but the look when the sun goes down. Here in Florida, the sky is full of blues, pinks, and some orange an purple hues at sunset. However, in Colorado, the sky is very orange. I know this thanks to a picture my best friend’s mom took and posted on Facebook. I have a theory about why this is: it has something to do with altitude.  Where she lives near Denver is 1 mile above sea level and here is basically at sea level. I don’t know if that actually has anything to do with the look of the night sky or if it’s more weather related, but it’s just a thought.   

Clean Color

This was one of those extremely random moments when I notice odd things. What can doing the dishes have to do with light? Besides the obvious of being able to tell if you have squeaky-clean cook and flatware, you have the soap bubble themselves. I just noticed how a bubble needs to be a certain size to refract light and be all colorful. Normally, I end up with a bunch of little bubble piled on top of each other in the sink, so the rainbow effect tends to go unnoticed.  Next time you hand wash your dishes, see if you can get any bigger bubbles and see for yourself.