It’s October, which means that kids are starting to plan excitedly for their Halloween costumes and trick-or-treating. They’re thinking about monsters, witches, and all sorts of human body parts.
That’s why preparation for Halloween can be a great time to teach your kids a little about anatomy! So we’ve pulled together some fun facts about the human eye.*
- The eyeball of a human weighs approximately 28 grams.
- The human eye can distinguish 500 shades of gray.
- Sailors once thought that wearing a gold earring would improve their eyesight.
- People generally read 25% slower on a computer screen versus paper.
- Males are more likely to be colorblind than females.
- Only 1/6th of your eyeball is exposed to the outside world.
- The average person blinks about 12 times per minute. That’s more than 10,000 times a day.
- If you lined up all of the eyelashes shed in your life time, it would add up to about 98 ft.
- Your eyes are composed of roughly 2 million working parts.
- Heterochromia is when the eyes are two different colors.
- It is impossible to sneeze with your eyes open.
- Your eyes will focus on about 50 things per second.
- Your eyes contribute to 85% of your total knowledge.
- Hawks and eagles see almost eight times better than humans.
We’ve got good reason to be talking about eyes today. It’s World Sight Day, a day dedicated to raising awareness about visual impairment and blindness.
Our friends at Johnson & Johnson Vision Care are doing lots of things today, and all through October, to get the word out about this important topic. Why? Because according to the World Health Organization, almost 19 million children are visually impaired.
What can you do? Well, making it fun for kids to learn about their eyes is a great start. You might also consider taking the Eye Pledge today and promise to get your eyes (and your kids’ eyes!) tested.
We hope you’ll take a minute out of monster mashing and pumpkin carving to help your family, and families worldwide, achieve better eye health. Happy Halloween, and Happy World Sight Day!
*Sources for above information primarily from the following:
Gigi Ross is a wife and mom of two kids (a 10 year-old boy and an 8 year-old girl) living in San Diego, CA. Gigi works as a content and community manager for Johnson & Johnson. A blogger and writer in her spare time, Gigi’s work has been featured on the Huffington Post, Babble, BlogHer and Mamapedia. She keeps her personal blog at KludgyMom.