22 August, 2008

Face

I have a face!

I mean, I had a face before, of course, but now that face is here where you can see it and not just me when I look in the mirror or when another person who is really there uses their eyes to see the light reflecting off of it (yep, I'm shiny) and thusly sees my face. You see, when their eyes see my face in real life, the light hits molecules inside their eyes that are also inside cells. And light is both a wave and a particle, so not only does it carry energy but it also can exert a force. Enough force from enough light quanta push on the molecules in the eye cells and make then change shape on a molecular hinge that acts like a switch. Like a light switch. But not. More like a pump because that switch makes little holes on the outsides of the eye cells open up and let charged particles enter. Enough charged particles get inside the cell that it accumulates a charge relative to the outside of the cell that is called the action potential. At a certain magnitude of action potential the eye cell fires off an electrical signal to the neuron that connects it to the brain that interprets the signal as seeing the light that is reflecting from my shiny face. If my face were not shiny at all it would be invisible.

And now you can see my face because I posted a picture.

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